1. health and fitness
2. drugs

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Perform anceEnhancing
Drugs
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Other books in the At Issue series:
Alcohol Abuse
Animal Experimentation
Anorexia
The Attack on America: September 11, 2001
Biological and Chemical Weapons
Bulimia
The Central Intelligence Agency
Cloning
Creationism vs. Evolution
Does Capital Punishment Deter Crime?
Drugs and Sports
Drunk Driving
The Ethics of Abortion
The Ethics of Genetic Engineering
The Ethics of Human Cloning
Heroin
Home Schooling
How Can Gun Violence Be Reduced?
How Should Prisons Treat Inmates?
Human Embryo Experimentation
Is Global Warming a Threat?
Islamic Fundamentalism
Is Media Violence a Problem?
Legalizing Drugs
Missile Defense
National Security
Nuclear and Toxic Waste
Nuclear Security
Organ Transplants
Physician-Assisted Suicide
Police Corruption
Professional Wrestling
Rain Forests
Satanism
School Shootings
Should Abortion Rights Be Restricted?
Should There Be Limits to Free Speech?
Teen Sex
Video Games
What Encourages Gang Behavior?
What Is a Hate Crime?
White Supremacy Groups
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Perfor manceEnhancing
Drugs
James Haley, Book Editor
Daniel Leone, President
Bonnie Szumski, Publisher
Scott Barbour, Managing Editor
San Diego • Detroit • New York • San Francisco • Cleveland
New Haven, Conn. • Waterville, Maine • London • Munich
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© 2003 by Greenhaven Press. Greenhaven Press is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc.,
a division of Thomson Learning, Inc.
Greenhaven® and Thomson Learning™ are trademarks used herein under license.
For more information, contact
Greenhaven Press
27500 Drake Rd.
Farmington Hills, MI 48331-3535
Or you can visit our Internet site at http://www.gale.com
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form
or by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
taping, Web distribution or information storage retrieval systems—without the written
permission of the publisher.
Every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyrighted material.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Performance-enhancing drugs / James Haley, book editor.
p. cm. — (At issue)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7377-1170-1 (lib. : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7377-1169-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Doping in sports. I. Title: Performance-enhancing drugs. II. Haley, James,
1968– . III. At issue (San Diego, Calif.)
RC1230 .P475 2003
362.29'088'796—dc21
2002028600
Printed in the United States of America
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Contents
Page
Introduction
1. Performance-Enhancing Drugs: An Overview
7
11
Craig Freudenrich
2. Athletes Will Never Stop Using Performance-Enhancing
Drugs
20
Matt Barnard
3. Athletes Must Stop Using Performance-Enhancing Drugs
24
Merrell Noden
4. Performance-Enhancing Drugs Tarnish Athletics
28
European Commission
5. The Ban on Performance-Enhancing Drugs Should
Continue
35
Economist
6. Teen Steroid Abuse Is a Growing Problem
41
Steven Ungerleider
7. Performance-Enhancing Drugs Compromise Medical
Ethics
45
Philippe Liotard
8. Performance-Enhancing Drugs Should Be Regulated,
Not Prohibited
50
Malcolm Gladwell
9. Ban Athletes Who Don’t Use Steroids
60
Sidney Gendin
10. Coming Soon: Open Olympics!
62
Oliver Morton
11. The Health Risks of Steroid Use Have Been Exaggerated
65
Rick Collins
12. One Strike, You’re Out
Mark Starr
76
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13. Performance-Enhancing Drug Testing Is Ineffective
79
Anonymous
14. Performance-Enhancing Dietary Supplements Are
Dangerous
88
Gwen Knapp
15. Performance-Enhancing Dietary Supplements Are Safe
91
Council for Responsible Nutrition
16. Genetic Engineering May One Day Replace PerformanceEnhancing Drugs
94
Jere Longman
Organizations to Contact
102
Bibliography
106
Index
109
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Introduction
The Tour de France is considered the world’s most competitive bicycle
race. Each summer top cycling teams from around the world compete in
the three-week event, which sends riders on a grueling, multi-stage course
through the mountainous countryside of Ireland, France, and Belgium. In
1998, the image of Tour de France cyclists as athletes at the peak of their
natural abilities was tarnished by allegations of widespread performanceenhancing drug use among competitors. The “doping” scandal broke a
few days prior to the start of the race when a masseuse for France’s Festina team, Willy Voet, was arrested after police found large quantities of
anabolic steroids and erythropoietin, or EPO, in his car as he crossed from
Belgium into France. A subsequent police investigation uncovered a wellorganized system, orchestrated by the team’s management and doctor,
for supplying riders with illicit performance-enhancing drugs. The Festina
team was suspended from the Tour, and further investigations by French
police led to the suspension and withdrawal of several more teams. Riders went on strike to protest the investigations, and less than half of the
original competitors finished the race.
French authorities are not alone in punishing athletes who use
performance-enhancing drugs. From the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to the National Basketball Association (NBA) to the National
Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA), most high-profile sports organizations have taken substantial steps to crack down on doping. Stronger
anti-doping initiatives are considered necessary to preclude scandals that
damage the image of sports and to silence critics who contend that not
enough is being done to rid sports of drugs. The IOC, for example, which
enforces the rules of the Olympic Games, set up the World Anti-Doping
Agency (WADA) in 1999 as an independent body charged with coordinating a consistent system for testing Olympic athletes. WADA works
with international sports federations and Olympic committees and has
begun conducting unannounced, out-of-competition tests on Olympic
hopefuls. This practice reduces the chance that competitors will rid their
systems of drugs before being tested. The list of banned substances on the
Olympic Movement’s Anti-Doping Code includes stimulants, narcotics,
anabolic steroids, beta blockers, diuretics, various hormones, and drugs
known as “masking agents,” which are used to prevent detection of illicit
substances during drug tests. WADA is also investing more of its resources
in developing new tests to keep pace with the changing array of drugs
that athletes are taking.
Whether or not those who contend that drug tests remain easy to beat
will be satisfied by renewed testing efforts remains uncertain. Clearly,
however, performance-enhancing drug testing has affected the careers of
many elite athletes. Athletes who test positive for drugs at the Olympic
level are stripped of their medals and records and are suspended from all
7
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At Issue
competition for two years on the first offense. In 1988, Canadian sprinter
Ben Johnson was stripped of a gold medal and was later banned from
track-and-field competition for life after he tested positive for steroids. At
the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, Romanian gymnast Andrea Raducan had her gold medal taken away when she tested positive for pseudoephedrine, a stimulant. American shot-putter C.J. Hunter
withdrew from competition after it was revealed that he had tested positive four times for the steroid nandrolone. Scores of other athletes were
also expelled from the Sydney Games after flunking drug tests. More recently, at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah, British
skier Alain Baxter was stripped of his bronze medal after testing positive
for methamphetamine, although an appeal is pending.
Detection efforts notwithstanding, seeking an edge over one’s opponents has long made the use of performance-enhancing drugs a part of
athletic competition. A review of sports history reveals that drugs and
sports have gone hand-in-hand for centuries, and surprisingly, drugs have
only been banned from the Olympic Games since 1968. Explains Ivan
Waddington in his book Sport, Health, and Drugs, “Performanceenhancing drugs have been used by people involved in sport and sportlike activities for some 2,000 years, but it is only very recently (specifically, since the introduction of anti-doping regulations and doping
controls from the 1960s) that this practice has been regarded as unacceptable. In other words, for all but the last three or four decades, those
involved in sports have used performance-enhancing drugs without infringing any rules and without the practice giving rise to highly emotive
condemnation and stigmatization.” This shift from tolerating doping in
sports to testing athletes and ostracizing drug cheats has been driven by
several factors. Perhaps most important, technological advances in performance-enhancing drugs, beginning in the 1950s, have bolstered the
contention that drug use threatens the integrity of sports. Another motivation behind the shift has been to deter athletes from using illicit substances with unknown health effects.
Consider, for example, the evolution of performance-enhancing
drugs. Athletes in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries looking for chemical enhancement were stuck with the limited efficacy of
stimulants and painkillers. In the mid-1950s, anabolic steroids, synthetic
versions of the male sex hormone testosterone, were introduced. Anabolic steroids build muscle and bone mass by stimulating the muscle and
bone cells to make new protein. Coaches and athletes saw these drugs as
a major breakthrough because they enabled athletes to transcend the limits of natural ability and reach new levels of competitiveness.
The first indication that athletes were using steroids came during the
1956 World Games in Moscow, Russia. According to Robert Voy in his
book Drugs, Sport, and Politics, an American doctor, John B. Ziegler, observed Soviet athletes using urinary catheters, because steroids had enlarged their prostates to the point where urination was difficult. Ziegler
returned to the United States and helped develop Dianobol, a steroid that
was quickly embraced by American athletes, who hoped it would level
the playing field with the Soviets. As a result, steroid use became widespread among elite athletes.
Concerns that doped athletes were exercising an unfair advantage
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Introduction
9
over their opponents and violating the ideals of sportsmanship followed
the rise in steroid use. Explains John Hoberman, the author of Mortal Engines: The Science of Performance and the Dehumanization of Sport,
“Performance-enhancing drugs have subverted this ideal [of sportsmanship] in two distinct ways. First, many athletes have abandoned selfrestraint in this regard, resulting in a crisis of conduct, such as Ben Johnson’s disgrace as a ‘cheater.’ Second, the scientization of the athlete,
either through drugs or other techniques, also involves a crisis of identity.
. . . To what extent can the emotional experience of competition be truly
shared with an athlete who has transformed himself . . . with drugs? . . .
Once the athlete has abandoned self-restraint, drug testing becomes the
sole guarantor of the ‘integrity’ of sport.” Sports authorities and fans
came to understand that technology would inevitably provide athletes
with an endless array of pharmaceutical enhancements. Controls had to
be placed on doping in order to prevent sports from becoming a science
laboratory where the human spirit played second fiddle to pills and injections. It is also important to keep in mind that as of 1990, following
federal legislation, the use of anabolic steroids became illegal without a
prescription, and possession can bring heavy fines and prison terms for
users and dealers. Breaking the law to stay competitive is regarded by
many observers as a further affront to the ideals of sportsmanship.
In addition to upholding the integrity of sports by expunging
cheaters, drug testing is done to deter athletes from participating in a
“race to the bottom” as far as their health is concerned. If performanceenhancing drugs were permitted in all sports competitions, contend supporters of the drug ban, athletes would have to become virtual guinea
pigs in order to remain competitive. And because athletes regularly take
larger doses of steroids and other drugs than medical patients, the longterm health effects of such drug use are unknown. Health reports from
some athletes exposed to performance-enhancing drugs offer reason for
caution. Greg Strock, a member of the U.S. Olympic cycling team in the
early 1990s, alleges that coaches, without his consent, doped him with
steroid injections. Strock attributes the breakdown of his immune system
and the end of his promising cycling career to large doses of the drugs.
Christiane Knacke-Sommer, a swimmer with the East German Olympic
team in the 1970s, was given regular injections of testosterone, a male
hormone, without her knowledge. In 1998, she testified in a trial against
her former coaches that the treatments “destroyed my body and my
mind,” and permanently masculinized her physique and voice.
However, many athletes are willing to chance these health risks, and
they take issue with assertions that there is something unfair or unnatural
about using performance-enhancing drugs. They argue that drug use is
one advantage among many, such as access to superior coaching or training facilities, that athletes may or may not have at their disposal to
sharpen their competitive edge. The fact that all athletes are not starting
with the same set of advantages discredits the notion that a “level playing field” can somehow be restored if drugs are eliminated. According to
this view, performance-enhancing drugs are simply making up for an athlete’s natural deficiencies or quality of training.
Another argument put forth by athletes is that elite sporting events are
so demanding that competing in them virtually necessitates drug use. Rev-
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At Issue
elations that Tour de France riders were doping themselves surprised some
fans of the sport, but riders who admit to drug use are more matter-of-fact.
They contend that without drugs like EPO, which enhances athletic endurance by boosting the amount of oxygen in the blood, competing in the
Tour de France would be nearly impossible. Nicolas Aubier, a former
French professional cyclist, explains the rationale behind drug use in the
book Rough Ride: Behind the Wheel with a Pro Cyclist, by Paul Kimmage: “To
be honest, I don’t think it’s possible to make the top 100 on the ranking
list without taking EPO, growth hormone or some of the other stuff.”
The desire to remain competitive among athletes goes a long way toward explaining their willingness to use performance-enhancing drugs.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, athletic achievement is esteemed by millions of fans the world over, who eagerly watch satellite
feeds of sporting events in anticipation of the next world record. Sponsors pay millions of dollars to have their products prominently advertised
at sports arenas or endorsed by athletes. In this environment, as Karen
Goldberg, a reporter with the magazine Insight on the News, asserts, athletes are under a tremendous amount of pressure to perform. Writes Goldberg, “As the stakes became higher, so did the number of athletes who
sought performance-enhancing drugs, spurred on by the lure of big contracts and lucrative endorsements.”
Keeping drugs out of athletic competition has only become more difficult for sports authorities since drug testing was introduced to the Olympic
Games in 1968. Changing social norms and technology, which spurred the
initial drive to ban drugs in sports, may end up settling the debate. Western societies have shown increasing tolerance for using drugs to enhance
performance in areas of life outside of athletics. Drugs such as Viagra,
Prozac, and Ritalin are now regularly prescribed to improve sexual, social,
and academic performance. It may simply be a matter of time before the
“integrity” of athletics no longer appears threatened by performanceenhancing drugs, particularly if safer drugs are developed. The ethical debate over whether or not athletes should use performance-enhancing drugs
is one of the issues discussed in At Issue: Performance-Enhancing Drugs. Other
issues include the effectiveness of drug testing, the rise of steroid use among
teenage athletes, and the dangers of dietary supplements.
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1
Performance-Enhancing
Drugs: An Overview
Craig Freudenrich
Craig Freudenrich is a biomedical researcher and a senior editor of science,
medicine, and the human body for the website HowStuffWorks.com.
Many athletes have turned to performance-enhancing drugs to
gain a competitive advantage. Performance-enhancing drugs include anabolic steroids for building mass and strength, and protein hormones that increase the amount of oxygen in body tissues, which boosts athletic endurance. Most of these drugs have
unpleasant and/or dangerous side effects and have been banned
by the International Olympic Committee and other governing
athletic agencies. Urine and blood tests are conducted to keep
drug users out of athletic competitions, but “masking drugs” are
often taken to hide the presence of illegal substances, making detection difficult.
E
very two years as the Olympic Games begin, we hear about athletes using or, at least, being tested for performance-enhancing drugs. Sometimes, competitors raise the question when one athlete does particularly
well. Other times, tests catch athletes with drugs in their systems. The
practice of using artificial substances or methods to enhance athletic performance is called doping. Doping has become such a great concern that
the United States formed the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in October 2000.
This viewpoint discusses why some athletes take drugs, what the major classes of drugs and their side effects are and how drug use is tested.
Although there is no statistical evidence about how widespread doping is,
athletes and coaches stress that most competitors do not take drugs. This
viewpoint will help [people] . . . who are concerned about young athletes
who might be influenced to try doping. You will learn the names and effects of the drugs as well as ways that the drugs are detected.
From “How Performance-Enhancing Drugs Work,” by Craig Freudenrich, www.howstuffworks.com,
2001. Copyright © 2001 by Craig Freudenrich. Reprinted with permission.
11
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At Issue
Why some athletes use drugs
Athletes face enormous pressure to excel in competition. They also know
that winning can reap them more than a gold medal. A star athlete can
earn a lot of money and a lot of fame, and athletes only have a short time
to do their best work. Athletes know that training is the best path to victory, but they also get the message that some drugs and other practices
can boost their efforts and give them a shortcut, even as they risk their
health and their athletic careers.
As far back as ancient Greece, athletes have often been willing to take
any preparation that would improve their performance. But it appears that
drug use increased in the 1960s. One well-publicized incident happened at
the Seoul Olympics in 1988 when sprinter Ben Johnson tested positive for
anabolic steroids and was stripped of his gold medal. Athletes may also
misuse drugs to relax, cope with stress or boost their own confidence.
Athletes may have several reasons for using performance-enhancing
drugs. An athlete may want to:
• Build mass and strength of muscles and/or bones
• Increase delivery of oxygen to exercising tissues
• Mask pain
• Stimulate his or her body (increase alertness, reduce fatigue, increase aggressiveness)
• Relax
• Reduce weight
• Hide their use of other drugs
Figure 1: Classes of Performance-Enhancing Drugs
Caffeine
Amphetamines
Cocaine
Anabolic steroids
Beta-2 Agonists
hCG
LH
hGH
IGF-1
Insulin
Alcohol
Beta-blockers
Cannabinoids
Stimulants
Build muscle/bone
Relaxants
PERFORMANCE
Mask drug use
Reduce weight
Increase oxygen delivery
Diuretics
Epitestosterone
Diuretics
EPO
Plasma
expanders
Secretion
inhibitors
Mask pain
Blood doping
Narcotics
ACTH
Cortisone
Artificial
oxygen carriers
Local
anesthetics
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Performance-Enhancing Drugs: An Overview
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The classes of drugs used for these purposes are shown in Figure 1. Most
of the drugs shown are banned outright in Olympic competitions. However, some of these drugs (cortisone, local anesthetics) are restricted in
Olympic competition because they have legitimate clinical uses. We’ll look
at each major class of drug and tell you about the dangerous side effects.
Building mass and strength
Mass- and strength-enhancing drugs used by athletes include:
• Anabolic Steroids
• Beta-2 Agonists
• Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG)
• Luteinizing Hormone (LH)
• Human Growth Hormone (hGH)
• Insulin-like Growth Factor (IGF-1)
• Insulin
Anabolic Steroids. A steroid is a chemical substance derived from cholesterol. The body has several major steroid hormones (cortisol and
testosterone in the male, estrogen and progesterone in the female). Catabolic steroids break down tissue, and anabolic steroids build up tissue. Anabolic steroids build muscle and bone mass primarily by stimulating the
muscle and bone cells to make new protein.
Athletes use anabolic steroids because they increase
muscle strength by encouraging new muscle growth.
Athletes use anabolic steroids because they increase muscle strength
by encouraging new muscle growth. Anabolic steroids are similar in structure to the male sex hormone, testosterone, so they enhance male reproductive and secondary sex characteristics (testicle development, hair
growth, thickening of the vocal cords). They allow the athlete to train
harder and longer at any given period.
Anabolic steroids are mostly testosterone (male sex hormone) and its
derivatives (natural, artificial). Examples of anabolic steroids include:
• testosterone
• dihydrotestosterone
• androstenedione (Andro)
• dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)
• clostebol
• nandrolone
These substances can be injected or taken as pills.
Anabolic steroids have a number of possible and well known side effects, including:
• jaundice and liver damage because these substances are normally
broken down in the liver
• mood swings, depression and aggression because they act on various centers of the brain
In males, the excessive concentrations interfere with normal sexual
function and cause:
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At Issue
• baldness
• infertility
• breast development
In females, the excessive concentrations cause male characteristics to
develop and interfere with normal female functions. The drugs can:
• stimulate hair growth on the face and body
• suppress or interfere with menstrual cycle, possibly leading to infertility
• thicken the vocal cords, which causes the voice to deepen, possibly
permanently
• if pregnant, interfere with the developing fetus
Beta-2 Adrenergic Agonists. When inhaled, beta-2 agonists relax the
smooth muscle in the airways of asthma patients by mimicking the actions of epinephrine and norepinephrine, substances that are secreted by
sympathetic nerves. However when injected into the bloodstream, these
drugs can build muscle mass (anabolic effect) and reduce body fat (catabolic effect). The anabolic effect appears to directly affect building proteins in the muscles, which is independent of nervous or cardiovascular
effects. Some examples of beta-2 agonists include:
• clenbuterol
• tertbutaline (Bricanyl)
• salbutamol (Ventolin)
• fenoterol
• bambuterol
Some of these substances (Ventolin, Bricanyl) are permitted in inhaler forms with written medical consent.
The major side effects include:
• nausea, headaches and dizziness because these substances constrict
blood vessels in the brain
• muscle cramps because they constrict blood vessels in muscles
• rapid heart beats or flutters because they stimulate heart rate
Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG). hCG is a naturally occurring
protein hormone produced by the developing fetus and detected in most
home pregnancy kits. hCG stimulates the development of natural male
and female sex steroids (testosterone, estrogen and progesterone). The increase in testosterone levels in males by the use of hCG would stimulate
muscle development as with anabolic steroids. hCG is not banned in female athletes because it would not lead to muscle development and
might naturally occur in high levels if the athlete is pregnant. The side effects of hCG in males are the same as those of anabolic steroids.
In addition to [steroids] . . . , some athletes take
drugs and engage in practices that increase the
amount of oxygen in tissues.
Luteinizing Hormone (LH). LH is a peptide hormone secreted by the pituitary gland at the base of the brain. LH is important for maintaining normal levels of testosterone in the male and estrogen in the female. In
women, a surge of LH during mid-cycle is the signal for ovulation. In men,
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Performance-Enhancing Drugs: An Overview
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excess LH or artificial LH derivatives (tamoxifen) would increase testosterone levels and have the same effects as anabolic steroids. Although no
general side effects exist, any possible side effects might be similar to those
of anabolic steroids.
Human Growth Hormone (hGH). hGH is a naturally occurring protein
hormone produced by the pituitary gland and is important for normal
human growth and development, especially in children and teenagers.
Low hGH levels in children and teenagers result in dwarfism. Excessive
hGH levels increase muscle mass by stimulating protein synthesis,
strengthen bones by stimulating bone growth and reduce body fat by
stimulating the breakdown of fat cells. Use of hGH has become increasingly popular because it is difficult to detect. Side effects include:
• overgrowth of hand, feet, and face (acromegaly) because of the increased muscle and bone development in these parts.
• enlarged internal organs, especially heart, kidneys, tongue and liver.
• heart problems.
Insulin-Like Growth Factor (IGF-1). IGF-1, which is also called
somatomedin-C, is a naturally occurring protein that helps in the action
of hGH. It also stimulates protein synthesis and reduces fat. Excessive IGF1 would increase muscle and bone mass as hGH does. Side effects include
low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) and other side effects similar to hGH.
Other compounds, . . . can be used to reduce the
presence of banned substances in blood samples.
Insulin. Insulin is a natural protein hormone produced by the pancreas, which is important for metabolism of sugars, starches, fats, and proteins. It is necessary for the treatment of juvenile (Type I) diabetes. In athletes, insulin combined with anabolic steroids or hGH could increase
muscle mass by stimulating protein synthesis. Side effects are mainly low
blood sugar associated with shaking, nausea and weakness, but excessive
hypoglycemia can lead to coma and death.
Increasing oxygen in tissues
In addition to taking drugs that build mass and strength, some athletes take
drugs and engage in practices that increase the amount of oxygen in tissues,
including protein hormones, artificial oxygen carriers and blood doping.
Protein Hormones. Erythropoietin (EPO) is a naturally occurring protein hormone that is secreted by the kidneys during low oxygen conditions. EPO stimulates the bone marrow stem cells to make red blood cells,
which increase the delivery of oxygen to the kidney. Endurance athletes,
such as those who compete in marathons, cycling or cross-country skiing,
can use EPO to increase their oxygen supply by as much as seven to 10
percent. EPO is difficult to detect. The increased red cell density (secondary polycythemia) caused by EPO, however, can thicken the blood.
The thickened blood, which is more like honey than water, does not flow
through the blood vessels well. To pump the thickened blood, the heart
must work harder, which increases the chances of heart attack and stroke.
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At Issue
Artificial Oxygen Carriers. Artificial oxygen carriers are man-made substances that can do the work of hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying protein in
your blood. Doctors use them to treat breathing difficulties in premature infants, in patients with severe lung injuries and in deep-sea divers. They
include substances such as perfluorocarbons, synthetic- or modifiedhemoglobins and liposome-encased hemoglobins (artificial red cells). It is
not clear how they benefit athletes. Possible side effects include immune
problems (fever, decreased platelets, increased phagocyte counts), cardiovascular problems (high blood pressure), iron overload and kidney damage.
Blood Doping. Blood doping is the practice of infusing whole blood
into an athlete in order to increase oxygen delivery to the tissues. A similar effect can be achieved by training at high altitudes. An athlete who
infuses his own blood may cause infection or cardiovascular problems because of the increased blood volume (high blood pressure, blood clots,
heart failure and stroke). An athlete who uses someone else’s blood runs
the risk of acquiring viral infections (hepatitis, HIV/AIDS).
Masking pain
Along with training and performing to be a world-class athlete comes the
pain of injuries. Sometimes, athletes try to mask their injury pain with
drugs, including narcotics, protein hormones, cortisone and local anesthetics (injectibles).
Narcotics. Narcotics are used to treat pain and include substances such
as morphine, methadone and heroin. Narcotics are highly addictive, and
the “high” associated with their use can impair mental abilities (judgment, balance and concentration). Also, athletes who continue to compete with an injury run the risk of further damage or complications.
Protein Hormones. Adrenocorticotrophic Hormone (ACTH) is a naturally
occurring protein hormone that is secreted by the pituitary gland and stimulates the production of hormones from the adrenal cortex (cortisone, corticosteroids, glucocorticoids). These adrenal cortex hormones are important
in reducing inflammation in injuries and allergic responses. So, by using
ACTH to stimulate internal adrenal cortex hormones, an athlete could
mask an injury. Possible side effects include stomach irritation, ulcers, mental irritation and long-term effects (weakening bones and muscles).
Cortisone. Cortisone is one of the adrenal cortex hormones mentioned above. Clinically, it is injected to reduce inflammation in injuries
and allergic responses. The advantages and side effects of its use are the
same as with ACTH.
Local Anesthetics. Local anesthetics, like those used by your dentist or
doctor, are used to mask pain in the short-term without impairing mental abilities. They include novocaine, procaine, lidocaine and lignocaine.
Athletes may use them so that they can continue to compete while injured. The major problem with their use is the possibility of further aggravating an injury.
Stimulants, relaxants and weight control
Many athletes live within strict social and dietary guidelines. To cope
with stress, general fatigue and weight, many athletes turn to stimulating,
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Performance-Enhancing Drugs: An Overview
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relaxing and weight controlling drugs.
Stimulants. Stimulants are generally used to help athletes stay alert, reduce fatigue and maintain aggressiveness. They act on the body to make
the heart beat faster, the lungs breathe faster and the brain work faster.
Stimulants include caffeine, amphetamines, ephedrine, phenylephrine,
phenylproanolamine, strychnine and cocaine. Possible side effects include nervousness, shaking, irregular heartbeats, high blood pressure,
convulsions and even sudden death.
There will be a constant struggle between the
development/use of new drugs for performance
enhancement and of new tests to detect these drugs.
Relaxants. Relaxants come in various forms, including alcohol, prescriptions such as beta-blockers, and cannabinoids such as marijuana.
• Alcohol is commonly used to help people relax because it reduces
activity in the brain and nervous system. While it may help an athlete relax and cope with the pressures of competition, it can also
significantly impair mental functions (judgment, balance, coordination). It is restricted in the Olympics and banned altogether in
certain events.
• Beta-blockers are commonly prescribed to treat high blood pressure
by causing the heart to slow down and blood vessels to relax. Athletes who require steady hands in competition, such as those competing in archery or shooting events, may use them. Possible side
effects include lower than normal blood pressure (hypotension),
slow heart rate and fatigue.
• Cannabinoids, mainly marijuana and hashish, have no clinical
value, but have recently been used for relieving pain in terminally
ill cancer patients. Cannabinoids cause hallucinations, induce
drowsiness, increase the heart rate and impair mental functions
(judgment, balance, coordination and memory).
Weight Control. Diuretics are commonly prescribed to treat high
blood pressure and are often found in diet pills. Diuretics act on the kidney to increase the flow of urine. Diuretics include furosemide, acetazolamide, bumetanide and ethacrynic acid. They are used by athletes whose
events have weight restrictions (weightlifting, rowing, horse racing). Diuretics are also used to mask the use of other drugs. Because they increase
the amount of urine produced, they dilute the concentration of other
drugs in the urine. Possible side effects include dehydration, dizziness,
cramps, heart damage and kidney failure.
Masking drug use
As previously mentioned, diuretics can be used to reduce the presence of
drugs in urine samples. Other compounds, including Epitestosterone,
plasma expanders and secretion inhibitors, can be used to reduce the
presence of banned substances in blood samples.
Epitestosterone. Epitestosterone is a biological form of testosterone that
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does not enhance performance. Drug tests for testosterone typically measure the ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone (T/E ratio). An athlete can
inject epitestosterone, lower the T/E ratio and hide the use of testosterone.
By itself, epitestosterone has no real harmful side effects.
Plasma Expanders. Plasma expanders are substances that are used to
increase the fluid component of blood. They are used to treat victims of
shock, trauma and surgery. They include Albumex, Gelofusine and
Haemaccel. Athletes can use these substances to dilute the concentration
of banned substances (EPO) in their blood. Most side effects include moderate to severe allergic reactions.
Secretion Inhibitors. Many drugs and foreign substances have structures that are shaped like organic acids. In the body, these organic acids
are removed by a protein in the kidney that transports organic acids. If
this protein can be blocked, then these drugs or foreign substances would
not appear in the urine. These inhibitors include probenecid, sulfinpyrazone and related compounds. Doctors use these inhibitors to treat gout.
However, the drugs can be used to manipulate the results of urine drug
tests. Possible side effects include nausea, vomiting, allergic reactions and
kidney problems.
Testing athletes for drug use
The majority of drugs that can be used by athletes can be detected in samples of urine. An athlete is told by a drug control officer to submit a urine
sample for testing. The sample is then sent to a laboratory for analysis and
the results are reported back to the governing athletic agency. For some
substances, blood samples may be required.
Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry. Gas chromatography and mass
spectrometry are the most common methods of chemical analysis. These
tests can be done on urine and blood samples. In gas chromatography, the
sample is vaporized in the presence of a gaseous solvent and placed
through a long path of a machine. Each substance dissolves differently in
the gas and stays in the gas phase for a unique, specific time (retention
time). Typically the substance comes out of the gas and is absorbed on to
a solid or liquid, which is then analyzed by a detector. When the sample
is analyzed, the retention time is reported or plotted (chromatogram).
Standard samples of drugs are run, as well as the urine/blood samples, so
that specific drugs can be identified and quantified in the chromatograms
of the urine/blood samples.
In mass spectrometry, samples are blown apart with an electron beam
and the fragments are accelerated down a long magnetic tube to a detector. Each substance has a unique “fingerprint” in the mass spectrometer.
Again, standard samples are run for identification and quantification of
drugs in the urine/blood samples.
Immuno-Assays. Some substances (such as hCG, LH, ACTH) can be
measured in urine samples using an immuno-assay. In this test, the sample is mixed with a solution containing an antibody specific to the tested
substance. An antibody is a protein that binds only a specific substance
and is how the body recognizes foreign substances. The antibody in the
test is usually tagged with a fluorescent dye or radioactive substance. The
amount of fluorescent light or radioactivity is measured and is related to
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the concentration of the tested substance in the sample.
Tests Under Development. Currently, there are no reliable tests for
hGH, IGF-1 and EPO. However, a test for EPO is being developed.* The
EPO test looks at the size of red blood cells. It has been noticed that synthetic EPO produces red blood cells that are smaller and bind more iron
then natural EPO. So, the size and iron content of red blood cells from a
blood sample are analyzed to determine whether an athlete has used EPO.
It seems that drug testing will become an integral part of sports competitions. There will a constant struggle between the development/use of
new drugs for performance enhancement and of new tests to detect these
drugs.
*[Editor’s note: A test for EPO was developed in August 2000 and adopted by the International
Olympic Committee (IOC). New forms of EPO being used by athletes may render the current test
obsolete.]
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Athletes Will Never Stop
Using PerformanceEnhancing Drugs
Matt Barnard
Matt Barnard writes for the New Statesman, a news magazine.
The moral crusade against the use of performance-enhancing
drugs in sports is being waged by international athletic associations and their corporate sponsors, who publicly maintain that
drugs violate the moral borders of clean athletic competition.
However, in their quest for fans and profits, these organizations
covertly encourage drug use by demanding ever higher standards
of achievement from athletes, only to condemn the few athletes
who get caught. Fans, on the other hand, have demonstrated a
willingness to support drug-aided athletes like major league baseball player Mark McGwire, who broke the home run record in
1998 while admitting steroid use. It is time to recognize that the
use of performance-enhancing drugs is here to stay and that elite
athletes will go to extreme lengths to succeed.
F
lorence Griffith Joyner (“Flo-Jo”) died, aged 38, from heart seizure in
September 1998. Even before her untimely death, the shadow of suspicion hung over her glorious two gold medals and one silver at the Seoul
Olympics in 1988: with her muscular form and husky voice typical of
steroid users, and with her retirement announced abruptly in 1989, when
mandatory random testing for drugs was introduced, there were whispers
that Flo-Jo had used performance-enhancing drugs.
Spotlighting the debate
Flo-Jo’s death will throw the spotlight back on to the debate over drugs in
sports. In early September 1998, another athlete was etching his name into
the record books. The US baseball player Mark McGwire hit the most home
From “Drugs and Darwin Fuel Athletes,” by Matt Barnard, New Statesman, September 25, 1998.
Copyright © 1998 by New Statesman, Ltd. Reprinted with permission.
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runs ever in a single season, America’s most prestigious sporting record. He
is the first athlete in history to break a record while publicly admitting his
use of performance-enhancing drugs. McGwire has admitted taking the
drug androstenedione, which helps to build muscle and aids recovery from
injury or exhaustion. The drug is on the banned list of the International
Olympic Committee (IOC) but is not banned by baseball’s governing
body, nor is it illegal. So far the use of drugs has not doomed baseball.
McGwire’s chemically-aided race against the record book is credited
with reviving interest in America’s first game, giving it a renewed sense of
value after the player strikes of 1994. As in many walks of life, unbridled success is able to sweep any latent moral misgivings neatly under the carpet.
Less predictably, however, the crowds lining the roads during the
1998 Tour de France applauded the cyclists as they swept past, supporting them despite the revelations of systematic drug-taking. The heavyhanded way the authorities conducted their investigation did little to win
them support, and many spectators found it easy to empathise with athletes who had spent eight hours a day for two-and-a-half weeks slogging
their guts out in one of the world’s toughest competitions.
The moral crusade against the use of drugs in sport,
like most moral crusades, is surrounded by myth.
The moral crusade against the use of drugs in sport, like most moral
crusades, is surrounded by myth. One of the myths is that fans won’t pay
to see drug-aided athletes perform, something that McGwire’s example,
and to a lesser degree the Tour de France, seem directly to contradict. It is
said that more people turn up to watch McGwire warm up than attend
most matches.
A second myth is that using drugs means that athletes don’t have to
work for their achievements. But, as Nicholas Pierce, lecturer in sport and
exercise medicine at Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, comments:
“Athletes will always be pushing themselves to the limit; if you could
help push them further, they will go further.”
The former cyclist Tommy Simpson is often mentioned in the context of sport and drugs, as he was one of the first athletes to die as a result of taking performance-enhancing stimulants. What commentators
tend not to mention is that he literally worked himself to death. He
pushed himself so hard that his heart gave out. Whatever one thinks
about athletes who take drugs, they don’t lack courage.
It is undoubtedly true, nonetheless, that the idea of using performanceenhancing drugs is deeply disturbing to a great many people. John Whetton is a former Olympic 1,500 metres finalist and European champion and
is now a principal lecturer in life sciences at Nottingham Trent University.
He is very clear that chemicals and sport shouldn’t mix: “Using chemicals
to do what your body isn’t capable of doing is cheating, but it is a form of
cheating that is hidden and therefore it is a nasty form of cheating.”
But McGwire is open about his drug-taking, and as has become clear
in the aftermath of the 1998 Tour, within cycling the use of drugs is an
open secret.
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Keeping sports “natural”
Yet why are athletes who secretly do altitude training not tarred with the
same brush? Clearly, the opposition to using drugs in sport is based on more
fundamental assumptions than that it is simply not allowed by the rules.
From the time the Greeks formulated the Olympic ideal, sport has
held a more significant place in our culture than merely a leisure pursuit.
In many ways it is used as a looking glass for the way we think about society. Richard Kerridge, co-editor of Writing the Environment, published in
1998, sees society’s attitude to sport as being a web of concepts all entangled around the idea of what is “natural” and how we define “nature.”
We see sport, he believes, as a celebration of nature, a way of demonstrating the wonders of creation, which is combined with the idea of discipline, abstinence and purity. “In part,” he says, “it’s to do with the
Christian tradition, in which to violate the laws of nature is to usurp the
power of God. The taboo is about interfering in nature and interfering
with the body.” With such a background, it is not surprising that drugs
are anathema.
On top of those ancient foundations is the more recent idea that
sport is a form of capitalist competition. Kerridge says: “Characteristic of
this attitude is that sport involves a relentless pressure for a kind of
growth, so the standards always have to be pushed higher and higher.”
Though capitalism is based on the dog-eat-dog world of Darwinian
survival, historians point out that the tradition of economic liberalism
has always been combined with a strong sense of moral paternalism. It is
perfectly acceptable to have obscene differences in wealth, but if a pauper
is caught stealing a loaf of bread they should be publicly flogged. Similarly in sport, athletes and sporting nations may have hugely differing resources and expertise, but that is part of the free market of sport. However, that free market has strict moral borders, and drug-taking falls
outside them.
Many feel that sporting bodies and sponsors covertly
encourage athletes to take drugs, yet abandon and
condemn the few who get caught.
In order to reinforce that border, everyone involved in the “war on
drugs” emphasises the physical risks involved. They are significant: liver
failure and an increased chance of a heart attack are among the conditions associated with performance-enhancing drugs. Because of the ban
on them, however, very little research has been done on how to reduce
the risk.
The former Soviet states poured millions of pounds into developing
performance-enhancing drugs, using the athlete as guinea pig—the individual as the servant of the collective. Nicholas Pierce is completely opposed to the use of drugs in sport, but is forced to admit that with very
large funds available it would be possible to develop a performanceenhancing drug that is virtually free of side-effects. And that, he argues,
would have beneficial consequences for the rest of society: “It would be a
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tremendous boost for medicine as well. It would help people recover from
operations and all sorts of things.”
Covert encouragement from sponsors
Athletes would become the equivalent of test pilots, who take high risks
and sometimes get injured or killed. Unlike test pilots, though, at present
there would be no safety checks or organisations to back them up. Indeed, many feel that sporting bodies and sponsors covertly encourage
athletes to take drugs, yet abandon and condemn the few who get caught.
Michelle Verroken, head of the Ethics and Doping Directorate at the
UK Sports Council, has had direct experience of the lengths to which
sports bodies will go to protect themselves. “It’s not unusual,” she says,
“to have some of the major sporting organisations in this country asking
us not to test athletes prior to a major sporting event like the Olympic or
Commonwealth games.”
Verroken, like many others, also raises questions about the drug-testing
at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, where the results went through organisations that had a direct interest in making sure the games were a commercial success, rather than through an independent testing organisation.
“In Euro 96, the Union des Associations Européennes de Football
(UEFA) worked very closely with us, so all the reports from the drug-testing
process were reported through us. Is that what happened in Atlanta, or
were the reports going straight back into the hands of the sports bodies
who have a vested interest in making sure nothing clouds that event?
“It’s not just an organisation like the International Olympic Committee, but it may be the organising committee from Atlanta or sponsors
who pay an awful lot of money to have their name associated with the
event and suddenly they are the ‘whatever-company drug-infested
games.’ Those are the sorts of headlines that devastate the marketing
people. Athletes feel they have been badly let down by the sports organisations that should have been protecting them.”
One of the most surprising reactions to McGwire’s achievement of
breaking the record for home runs came from one of his teammates, who
said: “What Mark has is God-given.” It seems that in baseball the competitors have accepted that drug-taking is a legitimate training aid, but
that it is only an aid.
Drugs are here to stay
The truth is that drugs are here to stay. Juan Antonio Samaranch, [former]
president of the IOC, had to backpedal after he said that only drugs that
harmed an athlete should remain on the banned list. But his was the first
official brick to fall from the dam. We will accept drugs in sport—at elite
level—just as surely as we accept them in medicine, cosmetics or farming.
Verroken’s response to such an assertion is simple: “If a safe
performance-enhancing drug improved everybody’s performance to the
same extent, what would be the point of taking it?” The answer is that,
rightly or wrongly, every athlete has inscribed on their heart the words
citius altius fortius—swifter, higher, stronger, as the Olympic motto reads.
They will go to almost any lengths to push the barriers back.
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Athletes Must Stop
Using PerformanceEnhancing Drugs
Merrell Noden
Merrell Noden is a regular contributor to Sports Illustrated and the
author of Home Run Heroes: Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and a
Season for the Ages.
The sport of track and field has been tarnished by the use of
performance-enhancing drugs among its leading competitors.
Each new world record raises suspicions that the record-breaker
was using steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs. To reduce the temptation among athletes to use drugs and foster more
realistic expectations from fans, competition should be emphasized over record-breaking as the measure of an exciting track
meet. Reliable drug testing must also be put into effect to further
deter athletes from using drugs.
I
don’t remember when I first heard about steroids. Probably it was
around 1972, when they were first banned by the International
Olympic Committee (IOC) and I was on the track team in high school. If
there was a debate about steroids in the papers, I didn’t pay much attention to it, mostly, I suspect, because I didn’t think they bore relevance to
my life as an athlete. I considered them the province of weightlifters,
shot-putters, football players and other “big” athletes—not skinny distance runners like me.
This I do remember: I passed the summer of 1981 in a state of giddy
transport, and from that I conclude that I cannot have known much about
steroids yet. That was the summer Steve Ovett and Seb Coe snatched the
world mile record back and forth like a couple of kids fighting over candy.
By then I was teaching junior high English at Princeton Day School, and
most mornings that summer my fellow teacher and running partner Eamon Downey and I would drive to a nearby deli for coffee and The New
York Times. Every day, it seemed—though, of course, this was not literally
From “A Great Ugly Cloud,” by Merrell Noden, Sports Illustrated, September 7, 1998. Copyright
© 1998 by Time, Inc. Reprinted with permission.
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true—one of the two Brits, each so charismatic in his own way, had run
some stunning time: if not a world record, then something very close to
it. For runners like Eamon and me, it was the equivalent of reading that
men had walked on the moon. Anything seemed possible.
A great ugly cloud
I’ve lost the capacity for that sort of exhilaration. Summer 1998’s unsurprising revelations of drug use among riders in the Tour de France and alleged drug-sample tampering by Irish swimmer Michelle Smith, and the
bans of two U.S. track and field stars, sprinter Dennis Mitchell and shotputter Randy Barnes, felt more like deja vu than shock. My capacity for
wonder has slipped away gradually over the years, starting in 1983, when
I learned that steroids would also help skinny distance runners like me. If
our bodies could tolerate two hard track sessions a week without steroids,
we would probably be able to handle three or four with them. Sure
enough, at the 1984 Olympics, one of those skinny distance runners,
Martti Vainio of Finland, tested positive for steroids after finishing second
in the 10,000 meters.
The use of . . . performance-enhancing drugs has
covered [track and field] with a great ugly cloud.
The use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs has covered the sport with a great ugly cloud. At the 1992 U.S. Olympic Trials in
New Orleans, when the Supreme Court granted Butch Reynolds a temporary restraining order allowing him to compete despite an earlier positive
drug test, for which he had been banned for two years, I asked a respected
track and field journalist, a former athlete, if he thought Reynolds was
guilty. “I have no idea, but I suspect so,” he said. “Why? Forty-three
twenty-nine.” He was referring to Reynolds’s world record of 43.29 seconds in the 400 meters, a time .57 of a second faster than anyone else had
ever run.
And there, in a nutshell, is the awful bind that track fans find themselves in: Any dazzling world record instantly raises the specter of cheating. Whatever miraculous feats I may witness in the future—a man longjumping 30 feet, a woman running a four-minute mile—I doubt I’ll shake
off the conviction that those marks have not been achieved naturally.
This sorry state is not the fault solely of athletes, most of whom, I
think, would love to see a return to the level playing field of the presteroid era. But where’s the incentive? Meet promoters sell tickets based
on the promise of records; agents make more money as their athletes run
faster or jump higher; federation officials obtain sponsorship based on
how hot their sport is. The last thing these people want is a scandal.
That’s why Olympic officials trumpeted the fact that of the 1,800 drug
tests conducted at the Atlanta Games, only two were positive. It’s great
p.r.; it’s what we all want to hear.
A 70-foot-plus shot-putter once told me that he believed no one had
ever thrown 70 feet without an artificial boost; the human body just isn’t
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At Issue
built to do that any more than it’s built to race over the Alps day after day
on a bicycle. So imagine yourself a young shot-putter, in love with your
event. Do you stay clean and top out at, say, 66 feet, never having
reached the glorious European circuit, beaten meet after meet by guys
you’re sure are juiced? Virtue may be its own reward, but if you’re willing
to be honest, I think you’ll agree that’s not an easy decision.
Several decades of . . . virtually meaningless [drug]
testing opened a Pandora’s box of artificially boosted
performances that raised fans’ expectations.
Unfortunately, several decades of, first, no testing and then virtually
meaningless testing opened a Pandora’s box of artificially boosted performances that raised fans’ expectations. A few years ago I stood in Stanford
Stadium with discus thrower John Powell. He pointed to the huge, empty
stands surrounding us and reminded me that he had seen them full for
one of the U.S.-U.S.S.R. dual meets in the early 1960s. “Would all those
people come out again to watch sprinters run 10.2?” he asked.
Fixing the mess
How do we fix this mess? Here are two suggestions that might offer a first
step.
First, since human evolution can’t keep pace with our hunger for new
records, and neither can advances in training, why not reemphasize competition over records? Who can actually see the difference between a 9.84
100 and a 10.04 100? But a close race, with two or three athletes straining toward the finish, now, that’s exciting. Admittedly, reeducating the
public to look at track and field this way would be hard, especially when
seemingly everyone—TV commentators, meet promoters, this magazine—
regards records as the measure of a great meet.
Second, I’m convinced that the best hope for cleaning this up lies
with the athletes. Drug testing that is planned and enforced by nonathlete administrators feels imposed, inviting attempts to circumvent it. Several decades ago Coe and current USA Track & Field CEO Craig Masback,
then an outstanding miler, pushed for the formation of a track and field
athletes’ union. It didn’t happen, largely because of the difficulties of
uniting competitors from so many countries and so many events. The
time has come to try again, and meaningful, reliable drug testing should
be the body’s first order of business.
Although Ben Johnson’s stanozolol-fueled 9.79 in the 100 at the
Seoul Olympics is one of just a handful of world records to have been
thrown out because of a positive drug test, there is no question that other
world marks have been set by athletes using steroids or other illicit performance enhancers. Haven’t those record setters forced their rivals—and
athletes of the future—to use drugs too? It’s that or chase fruitlessly after
marks that won’t be broken by clean athletes.
Tom Tellez, Carl Lewis’s great coach, told me that he does not think
Lewis could ever have equaled the 9.79 Johnson ran in Seoul, and the cur-
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rent world record, the 9.84 that Donovan Bailey ran at the Atlanta
Games, is still a long way from Johnson’s discredited mark. Had Johnson
not tested positive, how long would we have had to wait for someone
even to approach the 100 record?
If a sprinter ever does run a 9.79, of course, fans will automatically assume that he has been using performance-enhancing drugs, whether he
has or not. Is that the legacy today’s track and field athletes want to leave
behind? Cynicism where there might be exhilaration?
Any dazzling world record instantly raises the specter of cheating.
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Performance-Enhancing
Drugs Tarnish Athletics
European Commission
The European Commission is the executive body responsible for implementing the legislation adopted by the Parliament and Council of the
European Union. The commission enforces the European Union’s policy
banning performance-enhancing drugs from athletic competition.
“Doping” is the illegal misuse of drugs by athletes to enhance performance when training or participating in a sporting event.
While athletes have used plants and other substances to artificially enhance performance throughout history, dangerous doping methods are now commonplace. Some athletes view doping as
the only way to keep up with the fierce demands of athletic competition. In addition to jeopardizing public health, doping is at
odds with the principle that athletes should work without artificial resources to achieve success. Education and prevention campaigns must be undertaken to stamp out doping.
W
hat does doping really mean? One way of finding out is to look in
the dictionary, where it tells you that it comes from a Dutch word
“doop” meaning a thick liquid or sauce, a reminder that it originally referred to a South African drink. In days gone by, “dope” was something
you drank to help you work hard, if only for a short space of time. So, in
English, “to dope” means to administer a drug, specifically as a stimulant.
Artificially enhancing performance
An official definition of “doping” was adopted in Uriarge in 1963. Since
then, it has meant the use of substances and any other available methods
of artificially enhancing performance in a sporting event, or when preparing for it, in a way which violates sporting ethics and damages the physical and psychological health of the athlete or player.
So doping is an operation which sets out quite deliberately and knowingly to do two things: combat fatigue and enhance performance.
From “Joining Forces Against Doping—What Is Doping?” by the European Commission,
http://europa.eu.int.
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This definition needs some refining. To start with, there are the medical aspects.
What doping involves is misusing medicinal products or techniques.
Where products are concerned, it can mean every drug in the pharmacopoeia. Some of them are exogenous, which means coming from outside
the body and therefore easy to identify. Others are endogenous, stimulating the body to secrete particular molecules itself. Identifying these
means doing medical tests. When it comes to techniques, it boils down
to using medical practices for the wrong purposes, e.g. the practice of
putting sportsmen and women on [intravenous] drips [to replace lost
body fluids during athletic events].
We also have to find a definition of doping in terms of the law. It flies
in the face of sporting ethics, and tarnishes the image of sport as a means
of keeping society in balance. Doping is also bad for the health. It is a
criminal offence, and both users and suppliers of “dope” can be punished.
[Doping] f lies in the face of sporting ethics, and
tarnishes the image of sport as a means of keeping
society in balance.
And then, of course, there is the definition of the term as understood
by sportspeople themselves. More and more they seem to be split between two camps. For some, there is no “doping” unless a person’s life is
in danger. They can accept a situation where drugs are administered by a
doctor or under medical supervision. Others use the term to mean engaging in practices or taking substances which are against the rules. The
problem here arises from the lack of uniform standards. The criteria for
regarding products as forbidden drugs vary from one sport to another, as
the list drawn up by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is not
yet universally accepted.
The history of doping
Higher, faster, stronger—that was the Olympic motto dreamed up by
Baron Pierre de Coubertin at the end of the 19th century. Yet men and
women have always striven to excel themselves and sport, or physical exercise in the broader sense, has given them the opportunity to do so. And
there have always been techniques for sportspeople to apply or substances
to take to increase their strength, raise their standard or improve their performance artificially. The poppy was already being used in the Neolithic
era, and opium was highly prized by the Egyptians, the Romans and, of
course, the Greeks, who were also especially fond of beef when the Games
were on, believing that it gave them the strength of ten. Both then and
subsequently, in other parts of the world, ginseng root, coca leaves, hemp,
maté and kava (an extract of the pepper plant) were also highly valued.
Doping, however, in the sense used today, really came onto the scene
in the 19th century. In a way it was brought into being by medical advances and by the emergence of sport as we see it today.
The first drugs to be used were heroin and morphine. Heroin was
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mainly found in horse-racing circles, while morphine was very much in
fashion in boxing and so-called endurance sports. At any rate it was suspected of having caused the death of Arthur Lindon, a Welsh racing cyclist who died a few months after the Bordeaux-Paris race of 1896,
thereby becoming the first ever recorded victim of doping.
Things really got out of hand at the beginning of the 20th century,
with strychnine and ephedrine making their appearance, not to mention
steroids.
The team behind Thomas Hicks, a runner who won the marathon at
the 1904 London Olympics, were clearly giving him the first of these,
laced with alcohol and cocaine, to push him to victory.
The second (ephedrine) was actually the forerunner of amphetamines. Developed at the beginning of the 1930s, amphetamines first
came into use in sport at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. They were widely
used in battle in the Second World War and became extremely popular in
the years that followed. What made them especially common was that
most of the time they could be bought freely. Some time later, however,
they were clearly implicated in at least three deaths. The victims were two
cyclists, Knut Enemark Jensen from Denmark, during the 100 kilometre
race against the clock at the Rome Olympics in 1960, and Tom Simpson
of England in the Tour de France in 1967, as well as a French footballer,
Jean-Louis Quadri, who died in 1968.
Hormone doping arose out of the work done as long ago as 1889 by
a French physiologist, Edouard Brown-Séquard, and then in 1935 by
Ernest Laqueur, who isolated the male hormone, testosterone. Four years
later the Wolverhampton football team tried it out in England. It was not
until the 1950s, though, that anabolic steroids really made their entry
onto the sporting stage, starting with weight-lifting and athletics. But
they spread fast. The Spanish tennis player Andres Gimeno admitted taking them in 1959, a long time before it was discovered what lay behind
East Germany’s sporting successes in the 1970s or before the Canadian
sprinter Ben Johnson was disqualified from the Olympic Games in Seoul
in 1988.
Over the last few years, doping has taken a new and dangerous turn.
Growth hormones have appeared, as well as intravenous doping involving
transfusions of the athlete’s own blood, and then erythropoietin (EPO),
perfluorcarbons and reticulate haemoglobin. In none of these cases has respect for human life necessarily been the primary consideration.
All this has changed the whole course of doping. Drugs used to be
taken just for a one-off effect which activated various standard bodily
functions, but now they may bring about the biological reprogramming
of the body. To put it plainly, the time is not far off when it will be scientifically possible to make artificial but lasting changes in the way an organ functions and when the technicians of sport will be able to tailor
each drug to meet the specifications for a particular level of performance.
The Festina affair
The skies over Dublin were changeable. Everything was ready for the 1998
Tour de France to set off from Ireland, and France had not yet won the
World Cup. A few hours before the cyclists were to leave the starting line
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for the most prestigious cycle race of the season, a strange rumour began
to spread. In the middle of the week a trainer for the Festina team—the
pick of the bunch, the team featuring such riders as Richard Virenque, the
darling of the French public, world champion Laurent Brochard and Alex
Zulle, twice winner of the Tour of Spain—was checked by customs at
Neuville-en-Ferrain on the French-Belgian border. And according to the
rumour, the officers had found a great many unusual things in his vehicle, which was officially accredited to the Tour de France. Shortly afterwards the world was to learn that he had been carrying EPO, growth hormones, testosterone, corticoids, amphetamines and vaccines.
At the Tour, they started to shake in their shoes. For the first time in
the history of the Tour and for the first time, indeed, in the history of
cycle-racing and sport, the participants realised that the authorities were
aware of how little winning the race had to do with sporting prowess
alone and had decided to do something about the doping.
But it was a bitter struggle. When the Tour got started in Dublin, the
Festina affair had still got no further than merely questioning the Festina
team’s trainer, Willy Voet. Not until he confessed on 14 July and Bruno
Rossel and Eric Ryckaert, the team’s manager and doctor, were detained for
questioning did people at last realise that in this particular case the doping operation had been run by a very well-oiled and experienced machine.
The Festina affair began to have wider ramifications. On 17 July, Festina’s cyclists were disqualified from the Tour. Another case came to light
when investigations were started into the Dutch TVM team in Rheims,
and the Tour only made it to Paris a fortnight later by the skin of its teeth.
Twice, on 24 and 29 July, the participants threatened to go on strike.
Some teams had their vehicles and hotel rooms searched. On police orders riders were made to take medical tests. One of them, Rodolfo Massi,
was placed under investigation, as was Nicolas Terrados, the doctor for
the Once team, a Spanish line-up which withdrew from the Tour along
with five others.
At the end of the day, when Marco Pantani, the first Italian to wear
the winner’s yellow jersey since Felice Gimondi in 1965, crossed the finishing line in Paris at the head of the pack, everyone was left with a
strange taste in the mouth. For once it had become abundantly clear how
widespread doping was in sport.
Sportsmen and women are . . . acting under pressure
from an environment which practically makes
doping essential.
And then the fight began. It was a hard battle. Some called for all
sport to be completely above board, while others argued that there was a
place for doping provided it was done under medical supervision and did
not jeopardise the health of the competitor concerned. Some saw sport as
a school for human behaviour, while others, themselves active sportsmen
and women, were not at all keen to break with old habits.
It was a very real conflict, fought out on the sports field, with the organisers of the Tour de France putting the ethics of cycling at the top of
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their list of concerns. And there it stayed when the International Olympic
Committee, at the beginning of February 1999, held an anti-doping conference and set up the World Anti-Doping Agency whose primary task
was to make sure that the Sydney Olympics were clean.
It cannot be right . . . to treat doping as respectable
just because it is common practice in the society we
live in.
Governments were also involved. On the initiative of Marie-George
Buffet, the Minister for Youth and Sport, France passed a new law on action to combat doping. This made safeguarding the health of sportsmen
and women the main priority, stressed the need for prevention and laid
down stiffer penalties for suppliers. Things began moving in other European countries as well. When, in May, the French courts again looked into
the habits and practices of the cycling fraternity, the Italian courts (especially those in Bologna and Turin), not wanting to be left behind, began
investigating cases in a variety of sports, including football and cycling.
The Italian Minister for Sport, Giovanna Melandrini, said she was determined to move in the same direction as Marie-George Buffet. And lastly,
as the German courts looked into what had happened in the world of East
German sport, the European Union’s Ministers for Sport said they were
anxious to be involved in the Anti-Doping Agency set up by the IOC.
The challenge to sport and the media
With sport operating as an organised system for producing performances,
there is a built-in tendency to stray from the straight and narrow. The
task for sportsmen or women, especially in the top rank, is to beat the
others and get a result. This twofold imperative creates a third one: they
have to equip themselves to achieve their aims. So, to their way of thinking, doping does not seem like cheating; to put it bluntly, it is just something that has to be done.
The system makes increasingly gruelling demands on its practitioners
and they have to keep up. Sporting calendars are getting fuller and fuller.
Sportsmen also have to keep up with a system which is making topflight athletes and players more and more frail and tired. They now have
to cope with ever tighter constraints imposed by the media and with economic necessities which are more and more pressing every day. In these
circumstances the decision to take drugs is often taken passively. Sportsmen and women are, in a sense, acting under pressure from an environment which practically makes doping essential.
In the broader context, however, we need to stress that this need to
resort to artificial ways of carrying off a performance is at odds with the
basic values of sport as a social, cultural and educational activity. On the
principle that all athletes and players contain within themselves the resources they need to bring out their personal best, doping diverts sport
away from its true purpose. It prevents it from being a school for human
behaviour.
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The media influence sport in two ways. Firstly, they turn ordinary happenings into “events” and even set about making sure there are more of
them, for essentially economic motives. Secondly, in some cases the media
are well on the way to making organisers follow their rules. Sport no longer
just means physical exercise. Since the end of the 1970s, and especially
since the media began to call the tune, it has been turning into showbusiness, and the financial stakes involved are high. By their very essence,
because they involve such huge sums of money and because of the thinking which motivates the people who organise them, these show-business
events are more than likely to influence the use of drugs for doping.
The challenge to public health and medicine
Doping is a genuine public-health problem, since it affects everyone involved in sport, including amateurs and young people. All of them want
to be recognised, and all of them want to identify with an élite.
What makes doping a really burning question is that the products
and methods used are getting more and more dangerous and the ways
they are used can easily lead to real dependence, which in the end is tantamount to drug addiction.
But prevention is no easy task. To begin with, as there are no reliable
health indicators it is impossible to work out exactly how many people
are affected. And it is not at all easy even today to pinpoint what the actual pathological consequences of doping are.
This means that the battle has to be waged on two fronts. First, we
need to do something about prevention, in other words a publicinformation campaign should be directed at users and a public-education
campaign at non-users. Then we need to run a public-health alertness exercise. At all times we should remember that there is a price to be paid for
stamping out doping.
Athletes and players have to be kept under medical supervision. This
was true before and it is still true today, for the function of medicine is to
cure. Why it was overlooked before, and what makes it even more important today, is that doctors have to be concerned for the bodily and/or
psychological wellbeing of the sportsmen or women under their care.
Sports medicine can almost be regarded nowadays as a kind of occupational medicine, for it, too, helps individuals adapt to a particular environment. To put it simply, with the passage of time doctors have
steadily become more and more involved in bringing athletes to the top
of their form. This is obviously different from using drugs to enhance performance. And that is where the borderline lies between what is known
as “medical preparation” and doping.
We need a code of practice for doctors to follow, and the resources to
put it into effect. For there are now real dilemmas facing the medical profession. Refusing to take part in doping means, as far as doctors are concerned, not just objecting to the prescribing of banned products, but also
rejecting the use of authorised substances which are administered in ways
or prescribed in doses incompatible with medical ethics or sporting ethics.
But to push this line of reasoning to its limits, and looking at the way
things are developing today, might a doctor who refuses to take part in
doping eventually be suspected of refusing to give help to a person at risk?
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The challenge to society
Obviously, sport is not the only sphere of human activity where drugs are
used. There are other fields where rivalry and competition sometimes
push people to use artificial, i.e. chemical, means of achieving their ends.
It cannot be right, though, to treat doping as respectable just because
it is common practice in the society we live in. Sport is, first and foremost,
an activity unlike any other, one which relies on rules which are not supposed to be open to dispute and must be respected. Drug use for purposes
other than sport as such may be dictated by the need for high performance but that does not mean the law is blind to it. There are rules governing the taking of drugs, and most cases of drug dependence arise from
attempts to cure an underlying condition.
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5
The Ban on
Performance-Enhancing
Drugs Should Continue
Economist
The Economist is a weekly magazine covering economic and world
events from around the world.
The use of performance-enhancing drugs is widespread in Olympic
sporting events like track and field and swimming. While testing
procedures to catch drug cheats have become more precise and intrusive, athletes have grown more skilled at beating the tests with
help from savvy medical advisers. Skeptics maintain that drug testing in sports is an exercise in futility. They contend that
performance-enhancing drugs are just another way of gaining an
advantage in an inherently unfair activity. In addition, they argue
that such drugs should be legalized and officially regulated. However, legalizing the use of performance-enhancing drugs would turn
athletes into guinea pigs and send the wrong message to impressionable children.
I
t was a flash of sporting brilliance. The muscle-bound, shaven-headed
sprinter, born in Jamaica but wearing the colours of Canada, rose explosively from the starting blocks; 100 metres and 9.79 seconds later he
raised his index finger in arrogant triumph. Ben Johnson, competing at
the 1988 Seoul Olympics, had become the world’s fastest man.
Within hours he had also become, for many, its most reviled. Mr
Johnson, the doctors reported, had failed a drugs test. As he slunk from
the Olympic village in disgrace, the second-placed Carl Lewis, from America, stepped forward to take the gold medal. Mr Johnson’s humiliation,
said the sporting authorities, was proof that sport will not tolerate
performance-enhancing drugs.
They chant the same mantra today. The list of banned substances is
like the inventory of a pharmacy. Athletes are tested in season and out of
season, at random and with notice, at home and abroad. Indeed, the sensible athlete is wary even of an over-the-counter remedy for the common
From “Superhuman Heroes,” Economist, June 6, 1998. Copyright © 1998 by Economist Newspaper
Ltd. Reprinted with permission.
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cold. Fail a drugs test and the punishment is a ban from competition (usually for four years, sometimes for life), which means a loss of both honour and livelihood. No wonder, given such vigilance and such penalties,
the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 were declared the “cleanest” ever, with just
two of the 2,000 athletes checked (out of a total 11,000 competing) failing a drugs test.
But were the Atlanta games really the cleanest ever? There are two extreme, and irreconcilable, claims made about the use of drugs in sport.
The first is that drug use is rare: witness the Atlanta test results. The second is that it is ubiquitous because the cheats—or rather their doctors and
chemists—are too clever for the testers. Successful cheats by definition are
not caught (and are unlikely to confess). So neither claim can be proved
or disproved.
What seems clear, however, is that the use of performance-enhancing
drugs is a problem mainly for the athletes of track, field and swimming
pool. True, some goliaths of rugby and American football have sought the
help of banned body-building substances. Lyle Alzado, a former defensive
lineman for the Los Angeles Raiders, died in 1992 from a rare cancer that
he attributed to his prolonged use of steroids and human growth hormone. But in sports such as soccer, cricket or tennis, drug-abuse tends to
be merely recreational—and thus performance-diminishing rather than
enhancing.
There are several reasons why track, field and swimming are most
open to cheating with drugs. Swimmers and the athletes of track and field
are inherently more reliant on their physique than any ball-player. It is
impossible to be a successful shotputter or weightlifter without a certain
amount of sheer muscle. But it is entirely possible, as France 98 [the soccer World Cup] will prove, for successful soccer players to be skinny
wraiths or squat bundles of energy: what counts are ball skills and tactical expertise that no drug can provide.
Another reason is that in team sports such as soccer and rugby an individual’s weaknesses are not so exposed as they are in swimming or athletics, where even relay races in essence pit one person against another.
Sport’s problem with drugs is greater than it cares to
admit.
Finally, the culture of competition and imitation is strongest in track,
field and swimming. If coming second is coming nowhere, as all sportspeople tend to be taught (remember the words of [football coach] Mr
Lombardi), then this is most true in those individual sports where careers
tend to be brief, and opportunities to win fewest. For these athletes, taking a banned drug to come first no longer seems unthinkable—particularly if those already coming first are believed to be using such a drug.
An instructive article last year in America’s Sports Illustrated magazine
referred to a 1995 survey by Bob Goldman, a Chicago doctor. Dr Goldman asked 198 American athletes of Olympic standard if, in the knowledge that they would win and would not be caught, they would take a
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banned substance. Only three said they would not take the drug. Dr
Goldman then changed the question: by taking the drug, the athlete
would win every competition for the next five years, would not be
caught—but would then die from the drug’s side-effects. More than half
his survey said they would still take the drug.
[Performance-enhancing] drug users and their
suppliers have become more skilled at evading [drug
tests].
This seems to support other evidence that sport’s problem with drugs
is greater than it cares to admit. Indeed, of abuse in the past there is no
longer any doubt. Secret police files uncovered in the former East Germany reveal a systematic and successful government-approved doping
programme in the 1970s and 1980s to ensure that the communist regime
could boast more sporting medals per head than its capitalist rivals.
What the East Germans were doing to their athletes, other communist block countries were surely doing too. So, too, were many western
coaches. How else, ask the suspicious, could the human body—even with
better diets, facilities and coaching methods—have improved so quickly
its ability to run, jump, throw and swim?
Room for improvement
Have the 1990s, with the cold war over, seen a reduction in drug use? It
is difficult to say. Judy Oakes, a British shot putter who is vehemently
against drugs in sport, was ranked 27th in the world at her peak in 1988.
By 1996, despite no improvement in her performance, she had climbed
to 12th. The obvious conclusion is that she was no longer having to compete against so many drug-enhanced rivals. Michelle Verroken, head of
the Ethics and Doping Directorate of the UK [United Kingdom] Sports
Council, agrees that drug usage has probably declined. “If you’re using
drugs, you have to rely on a ring of silence,” she argues. “Kiss and tell
could be very attractive.” She has a point: someone has to procure the
drug for the naive young athlete and someone has to administer it in the
right quantities. If drug use were rampant, surely the news would leak, or
be sold, more frequently to a scandal-hungry media?
On the other hand, as recently as 1993, Belgium’s Prince Alexandre
de Merode, who is head of the International Olympic Committee’s medical commission, said that he believed one-in-ten Olympic athletes was a
regular drug user. Other experts claim that drug users are, in fact, a majority. Their answer to Mrs Verroken’s argument is that to break the ring
of silence around a drug user, even for a fat cheque from a newspaper, is
to incriminate oneself—and then be shunned by official sporting bodies
and sponsors. Meanwhile, there are plenty of sceptics who maintain that,
although East Germany’s abuse may have ended, China’s is rampant.
At first their accusations were aimed at the Chinese women distance
runners who dominated the 1993 World Championships in Germany.
Could their spectacular success really have been achieved by hard work,
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caterpillar fungus and turtle blood, as their coach, Ma Junren, claimed?
Increasingly the accusations are now being levelled against China’s swimmers, who have climbed the world rankings during the 1990s while also
being responsible for half the sport’s positive tests since 1991. One Chinese swimmer, arriving for the world swimming championships in Australia in January, was found by customs to be carrying 13 vials of human
growth hormone—turtle jelly, Chinese officials claimed—in her luggage.
At the championships themselves, four Chinese swimmers tested positive
for a banned diuretic (used to dilute urine samples so that anabolic
steroids are not detected).
Are such results proof that the system is working, that top-level sport
is becoming cleaner? It seems at least as likely that they merely reveal the
tip of an iceberg.
One reason to join the sceptics is that, just as the testers have become
more expert and intrusive—they now watch an athlete give his or her
urine sample—so drug users and their suppliers have become more skilled
at evading them. Water-based testosterone, for example, leaves the body
in a day. A good drugs adviser will know exactly how much of a drug an
athlete can take—and when he or she must stop. Andrew Jennings, a
British journalist with little good to say about the management of athletics, points out that, before his fall from grace, Ben Johnson had passed 19
dope tests in two years.
A second reason for scepticism is that many of the testing parameters
are so wide as to be almost meaningless. Because a few men and even
fewer women have naturally high levels of testosterone, for example, the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) has to adopt ratios which would
not exclude them. The result is that most athletes could take regular doses
of testosterone—thus boosting their performance, especially in the case of
women athletes—without falling foul of the guidelines.
A third reason is that sports organisations feel legally vulnerable.
Even the smallest mistake in the testing procedure could mean an expensive lawsuit from an athlete who sees his or her future earnings at risk.
An American discus thrower once tested positive for the anabolic steroid,
nandrolone—but he was exonerated because the doctor accidentally mislabelled one of the two sample bottles.
East German doping [performance-enhancing drug
use] was very carefully regulated—and the results
have been horrendous.
Another American, Butch Reynolds, a 400-metres runner, tested positive for a steroid after a race in Monaco in 1990, and was banned for two
years. Mr Reynolds steadfastly protested his innocence, alleged irregularities in the testing procedures and sought recourse against the International Amateur Athletics Federation in the American courts—which in
1992 awarded him $6.8m in lost earnings and $20.5m in punitive damages. The judgment was eventually set aside, but not before the sports
world had collectively trembled at its implications.
There is one other reason to suspect an iceberg. Some doping meth-
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ods simply cannot be satisfactorily detected by testing an athlete’s urine
(and for reasons, it says, of practicality and religious scruple the IOC has
so far been reluctant to require blood-testing). Urine tests do not show
human growth hormone, for example, nor added amounts of the cyclists’
favourite, erythropoietin, a hormone that increases the formation of the
red blood cells and so delivers more oxygen to the muscles.
The perils of permissiveness
Why not, then, abandon this definition of cheating as an exercise in futility? There is an intellectually respectable argument that goes as follows:
sport is inherently unfair because contestants are born with different abilities, are trained by coaches with differing abilities and benefit from facilities of differing standards. The taking of drugs is just another way of
gaining an advantage—and if it were legal, doping could be carefully
monitored to ensure the sportsman comes to no harm.
Up to a point this argument, advanced by pragmatists and libertarians alike, is convincing enough. Sportsmen are clearly not all born equal
or raised equally: a short Filipino, however obsessed with basketball, has
no chance of slam-dunking with Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal; a
Jamaican brought up in the Caribbean will not win a downhill ski-race;
American and European runners are beginning to feel they have no
chance against distance runners from the Kenyan highlands who have
spent their childhoods running several miles to school each day. As to the
objection that rich countries have more chemists and better laboratories
and so sportsmen from poor countries would suffer disproportionately
from a doping free-for-all, surely pills, and the knowledge of how to use
them, are a lot more transferable than the rich world’s perfectly-groomed
soccer pitches or Olympic-sized swimming pools.
But dig a little deeper and the argument shows its flaws. Would officially regulated doping really safeguard athletes? Given the pressure of
competition, it seems inherently unlikely. In practice athletes would be
guinea-pigs, taking drugs in doses well above any levels tested for safety
by the manufacturers. East German doping was very carefully regulated—
and the results have been horrendous: several male athletes have developed cancerous breasts. One depressing feature of the East German programme is that for many athletes the doping started in their childhood,
when they could never have weighed the consequences.
And that is surely the greatest flaw in the argument. Professional
sportsmen can be strange people, their values distorted by ambition, competition and money. But once upon a time they were just children, with
innocent dreams of emulating their idealised heroes. If the heroes are
seen to use drugs, then the hero-worshipping children will be tempted to
do so as well.
That is something no sporting authority can afford. The reason is not
just moral, compelling though that may be, but also commercial. The
money for sport and its participants comes from television companies and
sponsors; their money comes from attracting an audience that believes
that sport should embody, to quote the Olympic charter, “a spirit of
friendship, solidarity and fair play.” That is why Ben Johnson lost his
sponsors overnight and why—because of persistent rumours of drug use—
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Ireland’s Michelle Smith has failed to land the endorsement contracts she
must surely have expected after winning three swimming gold medals at
the Atlanta Olympics.
Cynics will say it is also why the Atlanta games were so “clean”: it
would have been commercially disastrous—for athletes, organisers, sponsors and broadcasters—to have them declared anything else.
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6
Teen Steroid Abuse
Is a Growing Problem
Steven Ungerleider
Steven Ungerleider is a clinical psychologist and an adjunct professor at
the University of Oregon. He regularly consults with the U.S. Olympic
Committee.
In response to social and athletic pressures to build greater
strength and muscle, middle school and high school students are
increasingly taking anabolic steroids. Steroids allow young athletes to train harder and recover more quickly from long workouts, but they pose numerous health risks to users. Side effects
may include heart and liver damage and the premature cessation
of bone growth in adolescents, which leads to shortened stature.
More research is needed to address the dangerous consequences of
adolescent steroid use.
I
n 1995, in a well-known research project, elite athletes were asked
whether they would take a pill that guaranteed an Olympic gold medal
if they knew it would kill them within a year. More than half of the athletes said they would take the pill.
The need to win at all costs has permeated many areas of our lives. In
sports, one of the forms it takes is the use of anabolic-androgenic steroids
(AAS). “Anabolic” refers to constructive metabolism or muscle-building,
and “androgenic” means masculinizing. All AAS are derived from the hormone testosterone, which is found primarily in men, although women
also produce it in smaller concentrations. There are at least thirty AAS,
some natural and some synthetic.
A pervasive problem reaches young athletes
Use of these substances has been pervasive for years among collegiate,
Olympic, and professional competitors. Experiments with steroids began
in Germany in the thirties, and their use by East German Olympic athletes is well known. More than 10,000 East German athletes in 22 events
From “Steroids: Youth at Risk,” by Steven Ungerleider, Harvard Mental Health Letter, May 2001.
Copyright © 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reprinted with permission.
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were given these synthetic hormones over 30 years. In August 2000, after
a long battle in the criminal courts, more than 400 doctors, coaches, and
trainers from the former East Germany were convicted of giving steroids
to minors without their informed consent. But despite these revelations
and convictions, scandals persist. In June 2000, the chief of sports medicine for the United States Olympic Committee, Dr. Wade Exum, resigned
in protest, saying that “some of our greatest Olympians have been using
performance-enhancing drugs for years, and we have not been honest
about our drug testing protocols.”
Now anabolic steroids are becoming available to middle school and
high school children as well. Concerns about body image and athletic
performance lead adolescents to use the substances despite their serious
side effects. Young athletes are responding to encouragement, social pressure, and their own desire to excel, as well as admonitions from coaches
to put on muscle and build strength and resilience.
A recent survey by the National Institute on Drug Abuse indicates
that steroid use by eighth- and tenth-graders is increasing, and twelfthgraders are increasingly likely to underestimate their risks. Some 2.7% of
eighth- and tenth-graders and 2.9% of twelfth-graders admitted they had
taken steroids at least once—a significant increase since 1991, the first
year that full data were available. Other studies suggest that as many as
6% of high school students have used steroids. The numbers are espeTable 1: Side Effects of Anabolic-Androgenic Steroids
In men:
• Gynecomastia (breast development), usually permanent
• Testicular or scrotal pain
• Testicular atrophy and decreased sperm production
• Premature baldness, even in adolescents
• Enlargement of the prostate gland, causing difficult urination
In women:
• Enlargement of the clitoris, usually irreversible
• Disruption of the menstrual cycle
• Permanent deepening of the voice
• Excessive facial and body hair
In both sexes:
• Nervous tension
• Aggressiveness and antisocial behavior
• Paranoia and psychotic states
• Acne, often serious enough to leave permanent scars on the face
and body
• Burning and pain during urination
• Gastrointestinal and leg muscle cramps
• Headaches
• Dizziness
• High blood pressure
• Heart, kidney, and liver damage
• In adolescents, premature end to the growth of long bones, leading to shortened stature
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cially alarming because many students will not admit that they take
drugs. Sixth-graders report that these drugs are available in schoolyards,
and they are increasingly used by nonathletes as well to impress their
peers and attract the opposite sex.
Anabolic-androgenic steroids fall into three classes: C-17 alkyl derivatives of testosterone; esters or derivatives of 19-nortestosterone; and esters of testosterone.
Concerns about body image and athletic performance
lead adolescents to use [steroids] despite their serious
side effects.
C-17 alkyl derivatives are soluble in water and can be taken orally.
Among them are Anavar, Anadrol, Dianabol (a favorite among Olympians),
and the most famous, Winstrol, also known as stanozolol. Stanozolol was
taken in large doses by the Canadian sprint champion Ben Johnson, who
was stripped of a gold medal in the 1988 Olympics. These steroids are often favored by athletes trying to avoid drug screens because they clear the
body quickly (within a month).
The 19-nortestosterone derivatives are oil-based; they are usually injected and absorbed into fat deposits, where long-term energy is stored.
The most popular steroid in this group is nandrolone (Deca-Durabolin).
It has recently made headlines because it is found in food supplements
and other preparations that can be bought without a prescription. Many
athletes who test positive for nandrolone say they had no idea what was
in the vitamin supplements they took. Because nandrolone is stored in
fatty tissue and released over a long period of time, it may take 8–10
months to clear the body.
Esters of testosterone, the third class, are especially dangerous. Among
them are testosterone propionate, Testex, and cypionate. Active both
orally and by injection, they closely mimic the effects of natural testosterone and are therefore difficult to detect on drug screens. The International Olympic Committee determines their presence by measuring the ratio of testosterone to the related substance epitestosterone in an athlete’s
urine; if the ratio exceeds 6:1, the athlete is suspected of cheating.
Inducing irritability, aggression, and health risks
How do anabolic steroids work? The scientific literature demonstrates their
effects, but it is not clear how they enhance the synthesis of proteins and
the growth of muscles. They apparently increase endurance, allowing
longer periods of exercise, and improve the results of strength training by
increasing both the size (mass) of muscles and the number of muscle fibers.
Especially when taken in high doses, AAS can induce irritability and
aggression. When Hitler’s SS troops took steroids to build strength and
stave off fatigue, they found that the hormones also made them more
fearless and willing to fight. Among young athletic warriors today,
steroids not only permit harder training and faster recovery from long
workouts but may also induce a sense of invincibility and promote ex-
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cessively macho behavior—and occasionally, attacks of rage or psychosis.
These drugs have a great many other risks as well. Men may develop
reduced sperm production, shrunken testicles, impotence, and irreversible breast enlargement. Women may develop deep voices and excessive body hair. In either sex, baldness and acne are risks. The ratio of good
to bad lipids may change, increasing the danger of heart attacks, strokes,
and liver cancer. In adolescents bone growth may stop prematurely. (See
Table 1 for details on side effects.) Injecting steroids with contaminated
needles creates a risk of HIV and other blood-borne infections.
Mental health professionals must consider how to address this problem in our schools. The National Institute on Drug Abuse and its nongovernmental partners have established Web sites to educate youth about
the dangers of steroids. These sites may be found at steroidabuse.org,
archpediatrics.com, and drugabuse.gov. A useful site for professionals interested in intervention and prevention is tpronline.org. Researchers at
the Oregon Health Sciences University have devised an effective program
known as Adolescents Training and Learning to Avoid Steroids (ATLAS).
It is a team-centered and gender-specific approach that educates athletes
about the dangers of steroids and other drugs while providing alternatives
including nutritional advice and strength training. A three-year study
demonstrated the benefits of the program for 3,000 football players in 31
Oregon high schools. ATLAS reduced not only anabolic steroid use but
also alcohol and illicit drug use and drunk driving. Still more research is
needed both to address the potentially deadly consequences of youthful
steroid use and to discover ways of preventing it.
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7
Performance-Enhancing
Drugs Compromise
Medical Ethics
Philippe Liotard
Philippe Liotard is a professor at the Sports Faculty of the University of
Monpellier, France, and the cofounder of Quasimodo magazine.
Medical ethics are being challenged by the demand for treatments
intended to enhance a person’s physical appearance and social
performance, such as anti-aging treatments and cosmetic surgery,
which are not directly related to the goal of good health. Doctors
involved in sport medicine now find themselves at the center of
this ethical dilemma. They face enormous pressure to go beyond
merely treating an athlete’s fatigue and pain to prescribing
performance-enhancing drugs. However, doctors should not reinforce society’s emphasis on performance at all costs by prescribing
drugs that mask pain and illness and put an athlete’s health in
jeopardy.
O
n the eve of the Sydney Olympic Games [fall 2000], sport medicine
is faced with ethical dilemmas that stretch well beyond the domain
of top-level competition.
Advances in life sciences and biotechnology are stirring up a broad
debate about ethics. Expert committees are being called upon to bring
ethical codes in line with genetic research developments, assisted reproduction, prenatal screening and the prospects for human cloning.
Standards for clinical research on humans, spelt out in the 1947
Nuremberg Rules [following World War II], are now being challenged by
medical advances and research unimaginable in those days. Questions
surrounding the prospects of human embryo research (and the risks of
new forms of eugenics) as well as research spurred by the mapping of the
human genome, are generating new laws based on consultation with national and international ethics committees, along with medical and re-
From “Sport Medicine: To Heal or to Win?” by Philippe Liotard, UNESCO Courier, September 2000.
Copyright © 2000 by UNESCO. Reprinted with permission.
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search groups. This is the most public part of the debate, the issues that
make headlines.
But medical ethics involve far more than these issues, which are all
essential to imagining the kind of “humanity” that we are embarking to
create. Tomorrow’s society is being assembled day by day in the privacy
of doctors’ surgeries. For medical ethics are also being challenged by patients themselves, and by practices that have become routine.
A premium on efficiency and performance
Doctors are inevitably affected by societal changes, shifting aspirations
and accepted behavioural norms. They also have to try, in their relationship with patients, to reconcile ethical considerations with the new demands arising from a liberal society that puts high value on efficiency,
output and performance. This is especially true in the case of drug-taking
(or doping) in sport, which can be seen as the logical outcome of a
performance-based type of medical practice. Oddly enough, discussion
about doping is generally reduced to a few cliches: it is branded as unethical in light of an imaginary sporting ideal. Calls are made for better
drug-testing and stiffer punishment for “cheats” and their accomplices.
But this skates over the real issue—the pressures of competition in sport—
and hides it even further from the public, doctors and authorities.
Doping in high-pressure sports can hardly be equated with reckless or
rash behaviour. On the contrary, it requires the conscious involvement of
the competitor who personally controls the state of his or her own body
and training. The athlete is led to take drugs daily to reduce fatigue and
to increase muscle power, or to recover quickly from an injury or excessive training, for example. The scandal over the Tour de France bicycle
race in 1998 showed how riders knowingly and personally take banned
substances in order to endure tough training and back-to-back races
throughout a whole season.
So the real ethical debate rests solely on medical practice. It means we
should reflect on how doctors respond to requests from athletes at all levels, for doping is also on the rise among amateurs and children.
[Doctors must] reconcile ethical considerations with
the new demands arising from a liberal society that
puts high value on . . . performance.
At the 43rd American Health Congress, held in Washington in September 1996, Thomas H. Murray, of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at
Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, Ohio), recounted how a
mother asked for growth hormones for her son to improve his sporting
performance. There are two factors behind this request. First, advances in
medical biotechnology have made it possible to produce artificial hormones. Second, the drive to win draws the doctor into altering the body
to make it perform better.
All medical codes of ethics condemn doctors acceding to such requests. The World Medical Association calls on every doctor to “oppose
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and refuse to administer or condone” methods that aim at “an unnatural
increase or maintenance of performance during competition” or which
“artificially change features appropriate to age and sex” (1981 Declaration
on Principles of Health Care for Sport Medicine, amended in 1999).
Hormone boosts
But many doctors must still deal with the consequences of sporting activity. Physiologically, sport depletes a person’s natural reserves, especially hormones. Intensive training for example, uses up the male hormone testosterone faster than the body replaces it. A doctor can put an
athlete on supplements to make up for that loss, just as iron or vitamins
are prescribed for people lacking them. So a deficiency in the body is
made up for without any regard for what might have caused it in the first
place—such as malnutrition, overwork or disease.
Doctors can still . . . refuse to play the game and
deplore the effects of a hectic life-style imposed by
the obligation to perform.
We do not yet have a separate branch of medicine dealing with performance. So far, it is just a few doctors straying from the original purposes of medicine. In the richest countries and among the elites in poor
nations, such medicine is in demand as a medical prop to cope with the
new emphasis placed on performance in all spheres of life. This is also
very similar in principle to anti-ageing treatments, where health care is
being adjusted to the fact that people are living longer. Hormone replacement therapy in elderly people is aimed at “improving the quality of
life to match the extra number of years gained,” according to Dr. Bruno
Delignieres, head of the endocrinology service at the Necker Hospital in
Paris. Here too, hormonal adjustment is being prescribed because of
progress in life sciences and patients’ requests for drugs to alleviate the effects of ageing. The doctor is responding to a person’s natural desire to
improve their physical condition. Just like cosmetic surgery and treatments for impotence, which have been boosted by the invention of the
drug Viagra, medicine is turning towards satisfying desires, spurred by images of well-being and youth. The pressure to get, maintain or preserve an
“efficient” body and a “slim” figure is steadily increasing. The same goes
for reducing pain during childbirth, old age and of course in everyday life,
which includes sporting activity.
So one might think there is nothing wrong with prescribing drugs
which improve the quality of an athlete’s life, marked by intense physical
activity. Fighting against stress, recovering from long-term fatigue, using
anti-inflammatory drugs to reduce pain caused by intense exertion become normal given social expectations of chemically-assisted well-being.
But testosterone and related products, such as nandrolone, are classified as anabolic steroids and are the substances most frequently detected
during drug testing. When taken in big doses, together with sufficient
food and training, testosterone increases body mass, strength and muscle
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power as well as aggressivity and resistance to fatigue and pain. Corticoid
drugs also reduce pain and help a person to tire less easily. So these substances are very suitable for easing the physical effects and psychological
pressures of competitive sport.
The crucial issue lies in deciding where medical efforts to restore equilibrium end and efforts to improve performance begin. An artificial dividing line has been drawn. A scale has been devised to measure the
quantity of “supplements.” Medical tests can now detect if a person has
taken “unreasonable” amounts of substances that are no longer banned,
but tolerated up to a certain point.
Medical ethics do not require a doctor to ask whether someone is
“cheating” under the rules of sport. A doctor does not have to take a stand
on demands made in fields other than his own. The problem is how to
define the state of health that the doctor aims for, not the level of doping. The World Medical Association’s Geneva Declaration (adopted in
1948 and amended in 1983) is clear: “The health of my patient will be my
first consideration,” a doctor is supposed to pledge. So it naturally condemns “procedures to mask pain or other protective symptoms if used to
enable the athlete to take part in an event when lesions or signs are present which make his participation inadvisable.”
Doctors (in sport or otherwise) who engage in these practices are not
performing their duty towards patients (which involves prescribing a halt
to painful activity) but are complying with the demands of sport. From
an ethical standpoint, a desired performance must not be taken into account in the course of diagnosis or treatment. Medical ethics condemn
any action dictated by interests or pressures not related to the goal of
good health.
This is where the debate gets really tricky, because in modern parlance and in the language of doping in sport, good health is understood
to mean the absence of illness or lasting after-effects. However, since
1940, the World Health Organization has defined good health as a combined state of physical, emotional and social well-being. The Centre for
Health Promotion at the University of Toronto, points out that good
health is not an end in itself but a means to a balanced life.
This makes good health a quest for well-being based on individual aspirations in a particular social and cultural context. Put this way, it becomes something extremely subjective and changeable according to the
time and place as well as the sex, age and social class of the person involved. Each individual decides on the basis of his or her own life and cultural environment a relationship to well-being, pain and illness.
Sport presents doctors with a paradox. Most of them believe physical
activity makes for a balanced life. But they are also well aware that competition upsets this balance, and that chemical-based treatments can be
prescribed to supplement deficiencies. If they respond to such demands,
they are only reinforcing the alienating emphasis put on performance at
all costs, of which sport is just the most striking example.
Science at the altar of performance?
But doctors can still, without any qualms of conscience, refuse to play the
game and deplore the effects of a hectic life-style imposed by the obliga-
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tion to perform. Acting in the interest of patients’ welfare involves teaching them how to pursue a balanced life. A doctor’s duty is to tell patients
why they are ill. If this can be done without problem where obesity and
the dangers of smoking or drinking are concerned, the same goes where
the dangerous effects of sport are involved.
Sport medicine is a forerunner of the medicine of the future—a medicine at the behest of institutions in the business of boosting efficiency. It
runs the risk of ushering in a common norm dictating people’s appearance (through cosmetic surgery), character (through prenatal diagnosis)
and social behaviour, namely through the demand for performance in all
fields, be it professional, sexual or sporting.
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8
Performance-Enhancing
Drugs Should Be Regulated,
Not Prohibited
Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine.
Performance-enhancing drugs allow athletes to train harder and improve their athletic performance over a short period of time. Many
of today’s athletes take the drugs willingly and have grown increasingly uncertain about what is wrong with doing so. Drug testing by
sports authorities is unreliable, and athletes are constantly taking
new drugs for which no test has been devised. The attempt to ban
certain drugs gives an advantage to those athletes with the means
to take newer drugs. Instead of prohibiting performance-enhancing
drugs, testing authorities should set acceptable limits for drug use.
Regulating aggressive drug use will restore parity to sports, ensuring
that no athlete can cheat more than another.
A
t the age of twelve, Christiane Knacke-Sommer was plucked from a
small town in Saxony to train with the élite SC Dynamo swim club,
in East Berlin. After two years of steady progress, she was given regular injections and daily doses of small baby-blue pills, which she was required
to take in the presence of a trainer. Within weeks, her arms and shoulders
began to thicken. She developed severe acne. Her pubic hair began to
spread over her abdomen. Her libido soared out of control. Her voice
turned gruff. And her performance in the pool began to improve dramatically, culminating in a bronze medal in the hundred-metre butterfly at
the 1980 Moscow Olympics. But then the [Berlin] Wall fell and the truth
emerged about those little blue pills. In a new book about the East German sports establishment, “Faust’s Gold,” Steven Ungerleider recounts
the moment in 1998 when Knacke-Sommer testified in Berlin at the trial
of her former coaches and doctors:
“Did defendant Gläser or defendant Binus ever tell you that
the blue pills were the anabolic steroid known as OralFrom “Drugstore Athlete,” by Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker, September 10, 2001. Copyright
© 2001 by the New Yorker. Reprinted with permission.
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Turinabol?” the prosecutor asked. “They told us they were
vitamin tablets,” Christiane said, “just like they served all
the girls with meals.” “Did defendant Binus ever tell you the
injection he gave was Depot-Turinabol?” “Never,” Christiane said, staring at Binus until the slight, middle-aged
man looked away. “He said the shots were another kind of
vitamin.”
“He never said he was injecting you with the male hormone
testosterone?” the prosecutor persisted. “Neither he nor Herr
Gläser ever mentioned Oral-Turinabol or Depot-Turinabol,”
Christiane said firmly. “Did you take these drugs voluntarily?” the prosecutor asked in a kindly tone. “I was fifteen
years old when the pills started,” she replied, beginning to
lose her composure. “The training motto at the pool was,
‘You eat the pills, or you die.’ It was forbidden to refuse.”
As her testimony ended, Knacke-Sommer pointed at the two defendants and shouted, “They destroyed my body and my mind!” Then she
rose and threw her Olympic medal to the floor.
Anabolic steroids have been used to enhance athletic performance
since the early sixties, when an American physician gave the drugs to
three weight lifters, who promptly jumped from mediocrity to world
records. But no one ever took the use of illegal drugs quite so far as the
East Germans. In a military hospital outside the former East Berlin, in
1991, investigators discovered a ten-volume archive meticulously detailing every national athletic achievement from the mid-sixties to the fall of
the Berlin Wall, each entry annotated with the name of the drug and the
dosage given to the athlete. An average teen-age girl naturally produces
somewhere around half a milligram of testosterone a day. The East German sports authorities routinely prescribed steroids to young adolescent
girls in doses of up to thirty-five milligrams a day. As the investigation
progressed, former female athletes, who still had masculinized physiques
and voices, came forward with tales of deformed babies, inexplicable tumors, liver dysfunction, internal bleeding, and depression. German prosecutors handed down hundreds of indictments of former coaches, doctors, and sports officials, and won numerous convictions. It was the kind
of spectacle that one would have thought would shock the sporting
world. Yet it didn’t. In a measure of how much the use of drugs in competitive sports has changed in the past quarter century, the trials caused
barely a ripple.
Today, coaches no longer have to coerce athletes into
taking drugs. Athletes take them willingly.
Today, coaches no longer have to coerce athletes into taking drugs.
Athletes take them willingly. The drugs themselves are used in smaller
doses and in creative combinations, leaving few telltale physical signs,
and drug testers concede that it is virtually impossible to catch all the
cheaters, or even, at times, to do much more than guess when cheating is
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taking place. Among the athletes, meanwhile, there is growing uncertainty about what exactly is wrong with doping. When the cyclist Lance
Armstrong asserted last year [2000], after his second consecutive Tour de
France victory, that he was drug-free, some doubters wondered whether
he was lying, and others simply assumed he was, and wondered why he
had to. The moral clarity of the East German scandal—with its coercive
coaches, damaged athletes, and corrupted competitions—has given way
to shades of gray. In today’s climate, the most telling moment of the East
German scandal was not Knacke-Sommer’s outburst. It was when one of
the system’s former top officials, at the beginning of his trial, shrugged
and quoted Brecht: “Competitive sport begins where healthy sport ends.”
The quest for “quantum leaps”
Perhaps the best example of how murky the drug issue has become is the
case of Ben Johnson, the Canadian sprinter who won the one hundred
metres at the Seoul Olympics, in 1988. Johnson set a new world record,
then failed a post-race drug test and was promptly stripped of his gold
medal and suspended from international competition. No athlete of
Johnson’s calibre has ever been exposed so dramatically, but his disgrace
was not quite the victory for clean competition that it appeared to be.
Among world-class athletes, the lure of steroids is
. . . that they make it possible to train harder.
Johnson was part of a group of world-class sprinters based in Toronto
in the nineteen-seventies and eighties and trained by a brilliant coach
named Charlie Francis. Francis was driven and ambitious, eager to give
his athletes the same opportunities as their competitors from the United
States and Eastern Europe, and in 1979 he began discussing steroids with
one of his prize sprinters, Angella Taylor. Francis felt that Taylor had the
potential that year to run the two hundred metres in close to 22.90 seconds, a time that would put her within striking distance of the two best
sprinters in the world, Evelyn Ashford, of the United States, and Marita
Koch, of East Germany. But, seemingly out of nowhere, Ashford suddenly
improved her two-hundred-metre time by six-tenths of a second. Then
Koch ran what Francis calls, in his autobiography, “Speed Trap,” a “science fictional” 21.71. In the sprints, individual improvements are usually
measured in hundredths of a second; athletes, once they have reached
their early twenties, typically improve their performance in small, steady
increments, as experience and strength increase. But these were quantum
leaps, and to Francis the explanation was obvious. “Angella wasn’t losing
ground because of a talent gap,” he writes; “she was losing because of a
drug gap, and it was widening by the day.” (In the case of Koch, at least,
he was right. In the East German archives, investigators found a letter
from Koch to the director of research at V.E.B. Jenapharm, an East German pharmaceutical house, in which she complained, “My drugs were
not as potent as the ones that were given to my opponent Bärbel Eckert,
who kept beating me.” In East Germany, Ungerleider writes, this particu-
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lar complaint was known as “dope-envy.”) Later, Francis says, he was confronted at a track meet by Brian Oldfield, then one of the world’s best
shot-putters:
“When are you going to start getting serious?” he demanded. “When are you going to tell your guys the facts of
life?” I asked him how he could tell they weren’t already using steroids. He replied that the muscle density just wasn’t
there. “Your guys will never be able to compete against the
Americans—their careers will be over,” he persisted.
Training harder with drugs
Among world-class athletes, the lure of steroids is not that they magically
transform performance—no drug can do that—but that they make it possible to train harder. An aging baseball star, for instance, may realize that
what he needs to hit a lot more home runs is to double the intensity of
his weight training. Ordinarily, this might actually hurt his performance.
“When you’re under that kind of physical stress,” Charles Yesalis, an epidemiologist at Pennsylvania State University, says, “your body releases
corticosteroids, and when your body starts making those hormones at inappropriate times it blocks testosterone. And instead of being anabolic—
instead of building muscle—corticosteroids are catabolic. They break
down muscle. That’s clearly something an athlete doesn’t want.” Taking
steroids counteracts the impact of corticosteroids and helps the body
bounce back faster. If that home-run hitter was taking testosterone or an
anabolic steroid, he’d have a better chance of handling the extra weight
training.
The basic problem with drug testing is that testers
are always one step behind athletes.
It was this extra training that Francis and his sprinters felt they
needed to reach the top. Angella Taylor was the first to start taking
steroids. Ben Johnson followed in 1981, when he was twenty years old,
beginning with a daily dose of five milligrams of the steroid Dianabol, in
three-week on-and-off cycles. Over time, that protocol grew more complex. In 1984, Taylor visited a Los Angeles doctor, Robert Kerr, who was
famous for his willingness to provide athletes with pharmacological assistance. He suggested that the Canadians use human growth hormone,
the pituitary extract that promotes lean muscle and that had become, in
Francis’s words, “the rage in elite track circles.” Kerr also recommended
three additional substances, all of which were believed to promote the
body’s production of growth hormone: the amino acids arginine and ornithine and the dopamine precursor L-dopa. “I would later learn,” Francis writes, “that one group of American women was using three times as
much growth hormone as Kerr had suggested, in addition to 15 milligrams per day of Dianabol, another 15 milligrams of Anavar, large
amounts of testosterone, and thyroxine, the synthetic thyroid hormone
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used by athletes to speed the metabolism and keep people lean.” But the
Canadians stuck to their initial regimen, making only a few changes: Vitamin B12 , a non-steroidal muscle builder called inosine, and occasional
shots of testosterone were added; Dianabol was dropped in favor of a
newer steroid called Furazabol; and L-dopa, which turned out to cause
stiffness, was replaced with the blood-pressure drug Dixarit.
Unreliable testing
Going into the Seoul Olympics, then, Johnson was a walking pharmacy.
But—and this is the great irony of his case—none of the drugs that were
part of his formal pharmaceutical protocol resulted in his failed drug test.
He had already reaped the benefit of the steroids in intense workouts leading up to the games, and had stopped Furazabol and testosterone long
enough in advance that all traces of both supplements should have disappeared from his system by the time of his race—a process he sped up by
taking the diuretic Moduret. Human growth hormone wasn’t—and still
isn’t—detectable by a drug test, and arginine, ornithine, and Dixarit were
legal. Johnson should have been clean. The most striking (and unintentionally hilarious) moment in “Speed Trap” comes when Francis describes
his bewilderment at being informed that his star runner had failed a drug
test—for the anabolic steroid stanozolol. “I was floored,” Francis writes:
To my knowledge, Ben had never injected stanozolol. He
occasionally used Winstrol, an oral version of the drug, but
for no more than a few days at a time, since it tended to
make him stiff. He’d always discontinued the tablets at least
six weeks before a meet, well beyond the accepted “clearance time.”. . . After seven years of using steroids, Ben knew
what he was doing. It was inconceivable to me that he
might take stanozolol on his own and jeopardize the most
important race of his life.
Francis suggests that Johnson’s urine sample might have been deliberately contaminated by a rival, a charge that is less preposterous than it
sounds. Documents from the East German archive show, for example,
that in international competitions security was so lax that urine samples
were sometimes switched, stolen from a “clean” athlete, or simply “borrowed” from a noncompetitor. “The pure urine would either be infused
by a catheter into the competitor’s bladder (a rather painful procedure) or
be held in condoms until it was time to give a specimen to the drug control lab,” Ungerleider writes. (The top East German sports official Manfred
Höppner was once in charge of urine samples at an international weightlifting competition. When he realized that several of his weight lifters
would not pass the test, he broke open the seal of their specimens, poured
out the contents, and, Ungerleider notes, “took a nice long leak of pure
urine into them.”) It is also possible that Johnson’s test was simply
botched. Two years later, in 1990, track and field’s governing body
claimed that Butch Reynolds, the world’s four-hundred-metre record
holder, had tested positive for the steroid nandrolone, and suspended
him for two years. It did so despite the fact that half of his urine-sample
data had been misplaced, that the testing equipment had failed during
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analysis of the other half of his sample, and that the lab technician who
did the test identified Sample H6 as positive—and Reynolds’s sample was
numbered H5. Reynolds lost the prime years of his career.
Regulating aggressive doping . . . is a better idea
than trying to prohibit drug use.
We may never know what really happened with Johnson’s assay, and
perhaps it doesn’t much matter. He was a doper. But clearly this was
something less than a victory for drug enforcement. Here was a man using human growth hormone, Dixarit, inosine, testosterone, and Furazabol, and the only substance that the testers could find in him was
stanozolol—which may have been the only illegal drug that he hadn’t
used. Nor is it encouraging that Johnson was the only prominent athlete
caught for drug use in Seoul. It is hard to believe, for instance, that the
sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner, the star of the Seoul games, was clean.
Before 1988, her best times in the hundred metres and the two hundred
metres were, respectively, 10.96 and 21.96. In 1988, a suddenly huskier
FloJo ran 10.49 and 21.34, times that no runner since has even come
close to equalling. In other words, at the age of twenty-eight—when most
athletes are beginning their decline—Griffith Joyner transformed herself
in one season from a career-long better-than-average sprinter to the
fastest female sprinter in history. Of course, FloJo never failed a drug test.
But what does that prove? FloJo went on to make a fortune as a corporate
spokeswoman. Johnson’s suspension cost him an estimated twenty-five
million dollars in lost endorsements. The real lesson of the Seoul
Olympics may simply have been that Johnson was a very unlucky man.
One step behind
The basic problem with drug testing is that testers are always one step behind athletes. It can take years for sports authorities to figure out what
drugs athletes are using, and even longer to devise effective means of detecting them. Anabolic steroids weren’t banned by the International
Olympic Committee (I.O.C.) until 1975, almost a decade after the East
Germans started using them. In 1996, at the Atlanta Olympics, five athletes tested positive for what we now know to be the drug Bromantan, but
they weren’t suspended, because no one knew at the time what Bromantan was. (It turned out to be a Russian-made psycho-stimulant.) Human
growth hormone, meanwhile, has been around for twenty years, and
testers still haven’t figured out how to detect it.
Perhaps the best example of the difficulties of drug testing is testosterone. It has been used by athletes to enhance performance since the
fifties, and the International Olympic Committee announced that it
would crack down on testosterone supplements in the early nineteeneighties. This didn’t mean that the I.O.C. was going to test for testosterone directly, though, because the testosterone that athletes were getting from a needle or a pill was largely indistinguishable from the
testosterone they produce naturally. What was proposed, instead, was to
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compare the level of testosterone in urine with the level of another hormone, epitestosterone, to determine what’s called the T/E ratio. For most
people, under normal circumstances, that ratio is 1:1, and so the theory
was that if testers found a lot more testosterone than epitestosterone it
would be a sign that the athlete was cheating. Since a small number of
people have naturally high levels of testosterone, the I.O.C. avoided the
risk of falsely accusing anyone by setting the legal limit at 6:1.
Did this stop testosterone use? Not at all. Through much of the eighties and nineties, most sports organizations conducted their drug testing
only at major competitions. Athletes taking testosterone would simply do
what Johnson did, and taper off their use in the days or weeks prior to
those events. So sports authorities began randomly showing up at athletes’ houses or training sites and demanding urine samples. To this, dopers responded by taking extra doses of epitestosterone with their testosterone, so their T/E would remain in balance. Testers, in turn, began
treating elevated epitestosterone levels as suspicious, too. But that still left
athletes with the claim that they were among the few with naturally elevated testosterone. Testers, then, were forced to take multiple urine samples, measuring an athlete’s T/E ratio over several weeks. Someone with a
naturally elevated T/E ratio will have fairly consistent ratios from week to
week. Someone who is doping will have telltale spikes—times immediately after taking shots or pills when the level of the hormone in his
blood soars. Did all these precautions mean that cheating stopped? Of
course not. Athletes have now switched from injection to transdermal
testosterone patches, which administer a continuous low-level dose of the
hormone, smoothing over the old, incriminating spikes. The patch has
another advantage: once you take it off, your testosterone level will drop
rapidly, returning to normal, depending on the dose and the person, in
as little as an hour. “It’s the peaks that get you caught,” says Don Catlin,
who runs the U.C.L.A. [University of California at Los Angeles] Olympic
Analytical Laboratory. “If you took a pill this morning and an unannounced test comes this afternoon, you’d better have a bottle of epitestosterone handy. But, if you are on the patch and you know your own pharmacokinetics, all you have to do is pull it off.” In other words, if you
know how long it takes for you to get back under the legal limit and successfully stall the test for that period, you can probably pass the test. And
if you don’t want to take that chance, you can just keep your testosterone
below 6:1, which, by the way, still provides a whopping performance benefit. “The bottom line is that only careless and stupid people ever get
caught in drug tests,” Charles Yesalis says. “The elite athletes can hire top
medical and scientific people to make sure nothing bad happens, and you
can’t catch them.”
Regulation over prohibition
But here is where the doping issue starts to get complicated, for there’s a
case to be made that what looks like failure really isn’t—that regulating
aggressive doping, the way the 6:1 standard does, is a better idea than trying to prohibit drug use. Take the example of erythropoietin, or EPO. EPO
is a hormone released by your kidneys that stimulates the production of
red blood cells, the body’s oxygen carriers. A man-made version of the
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hormone is given to those with suppressed red-blood-cell counts, like patients undergoing kidney dialysis or chemotherapy. But over the past
decade it has also become the drug of choice for endurance athletes, because its ability to increase the amount of oxygen that the blood can carry
to the muscles has the effect of postponing fatigue. “The studies that have
attempted to estimate EPO’s importance say it’s worth about a three-,
four-, or five-per-cent advantage, which is huge,” Catlin says. EPO also
has the advantage of being a copy of a naturally occurring substance, so
it’s very hard to tell if someone has been injecting it. (A cynic would say
that this had something to do with the spate of remarkable times in endurance races during that period.)
So how should we test for EPO? One approach, which was used in the
late nineties by the International Cycling Union, is a test much like the
T/E ratio for testosterone. The percentage of your total blood volume
which is taken up by red blood cells is known as your hematocrit. The average adult male has a hematocrit of between thirty-eight and forty-four
per cent. Since 1995, the cycling authorities have declared that any rider
who had a hematocrit above fifty per cent would be suspended—a deliberately generous standard (like the T/E ratio) meant to avoid falsely accusing someone with a naturally high hematocrit. The hematocrit rule
also had the benefit of protecting athletes’ health. If you take too much
EPO, the profusion of red blood cells makes the blood sluggish and heavy,
placing enormous stress on the heart. In the late eighties, at least fifteen
professional cyclists died from suspected EPO overdoses. A fifty-per-cent
hematocrit limit is below the point at which EPO becomes dangerous.
Even as we assert this distinction [between natural
advantages and drug use] on the playing field . . .
we defy it in our own lives.
But, like the T/E standard, the hematocrit standard had a perverse effect: it set the legal limit so high that it actually encouraged cyclists to
titrate their drug use up to the legal limit. After all, if you are riding for
three weeks through the mountains of France and Spain, there’s a big difference between a hematocrit of forty-four per cent and one of 49.9 per
cent. This is why Lance Armstrong faced so many hostile questions about
EPO from the European press—and why eyebrows were raised at his fiveyear relationship with an Italian doctor who was thought to be an expert
on performance-enhancing drugs. If Armstrong had, say, a hematocrit of
forty-four per cent, the thinking went, why wouldn’t he have raised it to
49.9, particularly since the rules (at least, in 2000) implicitly allowed him
to do so. And, if he didn’t, how on earth did he win?
The problems with hematocrit testing have inspired a second strategy,
which was used on a limited basis at the Sydney Olympics and this summer’s World Track and Field Championships. This test measures a number
of physiological markers of EPO use, including the presence of reticulocytes, which are the immature red blood cells produced in large numbers
by EPO injections. If you have a lot more reticulocytes than normal, then
there’s a good chance you’ve used EPO recently. The blood work is fol-
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lowed by a confirmatory urinalysis. The test has its weaknesses. It’s really
only useful in picking up EPO used in the previous week or so, whereas the
benefits of taking the substance persist for a month. But there’s no question that, if random EPO testing were done aggressively in the weeks leading to a major competition, it would substantially reduce cheating.
Limits allow parity
On paper, this second strategy sounds like a better system. But there’s a
perverse effect here as well. By discouraging EPO use, the test is simply
pushing savvy athletes toward synthetic compounds called hemoglobinbased oxygen carriers, which serve much the same purpose as EPO but for
which there is no test at the moment. “I recently read off a list of these
new blood-oxygen expanders to a group of toxicologists, and none had
heard of any of them,” Yesalis says. “That’s how fast things are moving.”
The attempt to prevent EPO use actually promotes inequity: it gives an
enormous advantage to those athletes with the means to keep up with
the next wave of pharmacology. By contrast, the hematocrit limit,
though more permissive, creates a kind of pharmaceutical parity. The
same is true of the T/E limit. At the 1986 world swimming championships, the East German Kristin Otto set a world record in the hundredmetre freestyle, with an extraordinary display of power in the final leg of
the race. According to East German records, on the day of her race Otto
had a T/E ratio of 18:1. Testing can prevent that kind of aggressive doping; it can insure no one goes above 6:1. That is a less than perfect outcome, of course, but international sports is not a perfect world. It is a
place where Ben Johnson is disgraced and FloJo runs free, where Butch
Reynolds is barred for two years and East German coaches pee into cups—
and where athletes without access to the cutting edge of medicine are
condemned to second place. Since drug testers cannot protect the purity
of sport, the very least they can do is to make sure that no athlete can
cheat more than any other.
Running on more than natural ability
The first man to break the four-minute mile was the Englishman Roger
Bannister, on a windswept cinder track at Oxford, nearly fifty years ago.
Bannister is in his early seventies now, and one day last summer he returned to the site of his historic race along with the current world-record
holder in the mile, Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj. The two men chatted
and compared notes and posed for photographs. “I feel as if I am looking
at my mirror image,” Bannister said, indicating El Guerrouj’s similarly
tall, high-waisted frame. It was a polite gesture, an attempt to suggest that
he and El Guerrouj were part of the same athletic lineage. But, as both
men surely knew, nothing could be further from the truth.
Bannister was a medical student when he broke the four-minute mile
in 1954. He did not have time to train every day, and when he did he
squeezed in his running on his hour-long midday break at the hospital.
He had no coach or trainer or entourage, only a group of running partners who called themselves “the Paddington lunch time club.” In a typical workout, they might run ten consecutive quarter miles—ten laps—
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with perhaps two minutes of recovery between each repetition, then gobble down lunch and hurry back to work. Today, that training session
would be considered barely adequate for a high-school miler. A month or
so before his historic mile, Bannister took a few days off to go hiking in
Scotland. Five days before he broke the four-minute barrier, he stopped
running entirely, in order to rest. The day before the race, he slipped and
fell on his hip while working in the hospital. Then he ran the most famous race in the history of track and field. Bannister was what runners
admiringly call an “animal,” a natural.
El Guerrouj, by contrast, trains five hours a day, in two two-and-ahalf-hour sessions. He probably has a team of half a dozen people working with him: at the very least, a masseur, a doctor, a coach, an agent, and
a nutritionist. He is not in medical school. He does not go hiking in rocky
terrain before major track meets. When Bannister told him, last summer,
how he had prepared for his four-minute mile, El Guerrouj was stunned.
“For me, a rest day is perhaps when I train in the morning and spend the
afternoon at the cinema,” he said. El Guerrouj certainly has more than his
share of natural ability, but his achievements are a reflection of much
more than that: of the fact that he is better coached and better prepared
than his opponents, that he trains harder and more intelligently, that he
has found a way to stay injury free, and that he can recover so quickly
from one day of five-hour workouts that he can follow it, the next day,
with another five-hour workout.
Steroids versus honest effort
Of these two paradigms, we have always been much more comfortable
with the first: we want the relation between talent and achievement to be
transparent, and we worry about the way ability is now so aggressively
managed and augmented. Steroids bother us because they violate the
honesty of effort: they permit an athlete to train too hard, beyond what
seems reasonable. EPO fails the same test. For years, athletes underwent
high-altitude training sessions, which had the same effect as EPO—promoting the manufacture of additional red blood cells. This was considered acceptable, while EPO is not, because we like to distinguish between
those advantages which are natural or earned and those which come out
of a vial.
Even as we assert this distinction on the playing field, though, we
defy it in our own lives. We have come to prefer a world where the distractable take Ritalin, the depressed take Prozac, and the unattractive get
cosmetic surgery to a world ruled, arbitrarily, by those fortunate few who
were born focussed, happy, and beautiful. Cosmetic surgery is not
“earned” beauty, but then natural beauty isn’t earned, either. One of the
principal contributions of the late twentieth century was the moral deregulation of social competition—the insistence that advantages derived
from artificial and extraordinary intervention are no less legitimate than
the advantages of nature. All that athletes want, for better or worse, is the
chance to play by those same rules.
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Ban Athletes Who
Don’t Use Steroids
Sidney Gendin
Sidney Gendin is the author of More Steroids, Please, and is a retired
professor of philosophy from Eastern Michigan University.
Governments and sports federations are wrong for continuing to
ban the use of performance-enhancing drugs like steroids. Steroids
are less hazardous to human health than smoking or drinking,
and society has traditionally permitted people to engage in risky
activities, such as mountain climbing, when the danger posed
only affects the individual involved. In addition, ineffective and
more costly dietary supplements, which falsely claim to work just
like steroids, are legal. Steroid use by athletes should not be considered unnatural or cheating—the drugs simply allow athletes to
perform at their very best.
I
sn’t it time for the brainwashed public to know the truth about
steroids? In their ideological zeal to ban “performance enhancing”
drugs, national governments and the various local and international
sports federations have ignorantly and self-righteously declared that
steroid use is cheating, dangerous, and stupid. In fact, in general, it is neither dangerous nor stupid and it is cheating only because it has been
capriciously commanded to be so.
Steroid dangers are minimal
In the first place, with respect to the alleged danger, people ought to
know that there are dozens of steroids and it would be absurd to imagine
that their risks are identical. Moreover, steroids come in two broad
classes—the orals and the injectables. It is true that most of the orals have
associated hazards but not a single one of them is as hazardous as smoking or drinking. The principle dangers of the injectables result from overdosing and, even so, they are mainly such alarming matters as acne and
severe headache. Every legally obtainable prescription drug comes with a
From “Ban Athletes Who Don’t Use Steroids,” by Sidney Gendin, www.meso-rx.com, 2002.
Copyright © 2002 by MESO/Rx.com. Reprinted with permission.
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warning of dozens of worse side effects.
But what is that to you and me? Why should we legislate what risks
people should run unless they can interfere with the rest of us? In our
democratic, capitalist society many persons risk their last few dollars to
start up businesses which will probably fail. We do not stop them. If and
when they become multimillionaires we congratulate them. We don’t
permit people to drive without seatbelts because their accidents drive up
insurance rates for the rest of us but we let people engage in the far riskier
business of climbing mountains since the danger is mainly self-regarding.
So enough virtue-parading preaching.
Product hypocrisy
As for the so-called cheating, who really are the cheaters? The average
steroid user spends about $100–150 per month while the supplement industries grow rich on suckering in the hundreds of thousands, possibly
millions, of foolish people spending up to $1000 per month on a variety
of mumbo jumbo: androstenedione, 4-androstenedione, 19-androstenedione, androstenediol and the several 4, 5, 17, and 19 varieties of androstenediol, tribulus terrestris, enzymatic conversion accelerators,
growth hormone stimulators, hormone-releasing peptides, testosterone
“boosters,” dozens of magical herbs and a ridiculous number of “non
drugs” with unpronouncable names so they are always abbreviated such
as HMB and DHEA. On top of all this, these folks who tend to be more affluent than steroid users, are pumping protein powders into their milk—
$9 per day—and gobbling down protein candy bars—up to $3 each—
while saving a bit of energy for screaming “Foul! Cheater!” at the poor
steroid user. They are told by the manufacturers and distributors of these
outlandish products that they look like steroids, feel like steroids and
work like steroids. So? Why not ban them like steroids?
Not a single [orally administered steroid] is as
hazardous as smoking or drinking.
But I say ban them and only them. For one thing, they don’t work as
well as steroids. More importantly, what care I as a fan that someone sets
a remarkable record because he used steroids? I pay money to see sporting events and I am entitled to an athlete’s very best. Isaac Stern can afford a violin that few violinists and no high school orchestra player can
afford. Is he taking unfair advantage of them? If I pay $60 to hear Stern
and learn his tone was not up to par because he was too lazy to bring his
own violin and borrowed a $50 one from a high school kid, I justifiably
want my money back. What care I that he usually plays upon a $200,000
instrument? I am not bothered by this; I want his very best. Likewise, I
want the very best an athlete can give me. I don’t want to watch athletes
who could have done better if only they had used steroids. Talk of steroid
performance as unnatural is as ridiculous as complaining about artificial
hearts. As for me I plan to have a T-shirt made for me that will read on its
front: “Use steroids or go home. Enough of crying and whining.”
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Coming Soon:
Open Olympics!
Oliver Morton
Oliver Morton is a freelance writer and a contributing editor at Wired
and Newsweek International.
The use of performance-enhancing drugs should be permitted in
an Open Olympics that would take place alongside a separate
Olympics in which drug use is prohibited. Instead of feeling compelled to take drugs in order to compete effectively, athletes would
have a real choice as to whether or not they will remain drug-free.
This parallel system would also offer greater protection to the
health and well-being of those athletes who decide to use drugs,
since they could openly seek the advice of health professionals.
Using drugs to boost performance is just another manifestation of
the way people have blurred the boundary between the human
and the technological.
T
he Tour de France has a glorious history—think of Eddy Merckx’s winning all three jerseys in 1969, Louison Bobet’s heyday in the 1950s,
the epic 1910 battle between Francois Faber and Octave Lapize. But as this
year’s prologue gets underway at Puy du Fou on July 3, there will be just
one previous race on most people’s minds—last year’s, when the discovery of systematic doping in the top-ranking Festina team and elsewhere
plunged the event into chaos. There were arrests, expulsions and go-slows
[protests staged by riders] (a case of Festina exeunt, omnes lentes); only
88 of 189 competitors completed the competition.
As Graeme Fife’s thorough and engaging recent book “Tour de France”
makes clear, the Tour is an exceptional event (in what other sport is the
United States represented by its postal service?). In drug use, though, it is
simply at one end of a spectrum. Cyclists—competitors in the only motor
sport where the driver is the motor—probably take drugs more routinely
than other athletes and have been at it for longer. Some relied on
strychnine-and-speed-ball boosts to get through the 19th century’s hellish
six-day endurance races. But the difference is one of degree, not of kind.
From “Coming Soon: Open Olympics!” by Oliver Morton, Newsweek International, July 12, 1999.
Copyright © 1999 by Newsweek, Inc. Reprinted with permission.
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The sporting establishment decries drugs as the product of an unsportsmanlike win-at-all-costs mentality. It then says that it must, at all
costs, win the war on drugs. When this accepted truth is challenged, two
justifications are offered. One is the protection of athletes, particularly
young ones, who worry that they will have to use drugs in order to compete. Second, it is said that to use a drug is to be untrue to the ideal of what
an athlete should be. Both of these objections are understandable, especially the first. But neither is an argument against the open use of drugs in
sport, as long as events for the undrugged take place in parallel. An honorable division of the spoils could end the war for good, by giving fair opportunities for victory both to those who take drugs and to those who don’t.
Fair opportunities for [Olympic] victory [should be
given] both to those who take drugs and to those
who don’t.
Imagine two Olympics: Olympics Classic, without drugs and with stringent random blood tests and lifetime bans to keep it that way; the Open
Olympics, with pharmaceutical enhancements of all kinds openly reported,
medically monitored, perhaps sponsored by drug companies. In the first
you find athletes who believe that, while high-tech equipment is fine, hightech drugs and scientifically augmented metabolisms aren’t. In the second
you find those who have made the decision that citius, altius, fortius [the
Olympic motto—faster, higher, stronger] requires whatever it takes.
Some will argue that the Open Olympians would be putting themselves at risk. After all, a number of young cyclists have died in the past
decade and circumstances suggest that drugs—notably the bloodthickener EPO—were to blame; the tell-all memoir by Willy Voet, the Festina team’s soigneur, whose arrest with a car full of dope set off last year’s
fiasco, is called “Massacre a la chaine”—serial murder. But it is the unsupervised use of unsuitable drugs and of regimes designed to disguise that
use from the authorities that are deadly. The Festina team’s approach of
systematic and supervised drug enhancement, though it broke the rules,
at least tried to ensure a certain amount of safety for the cyclists.
“Vous etes tous des assassins!” [you are all assassins] screamed Lapize
as he reached the top of the Tour’s first-ever Pyrenean stage; he was
shouting at the race’s marshals, not its drug peddlers. On something as
grueling as the Tour, athletes risk their health, whether they take drugs or
not. Sporting accidents of all sorts regularly cripple and kill both adults
and children the world over. Drugs taken voluntarily, openly and with
professional advice will add to these risks far less than they do when
taken in a culture of hearsay and secrecy. The need to hide drug taking is
currently a significant added risk to the cheats who indulge. And openness builds much-needed expertise. In an Open Olympics, especially one
in which pharmaceutical companies were involved as sponsors, there
would be a strong incentive for effective but comparatively safe dosing
regimes to be found and promulgated. Ways might be found to make
drugged sports safer than undrugged ones—and in the long run, such
knowledge could help the nonathletic masses.
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Those masses, after all, are no strangers to drugs and their effects. And
as scientific understanding of the body’s workings grows, and as pharmaceutical companies find new products and strategies for appealing to the
healthy—a larger if less motivated market than the sick—drugs of enhancement will reach into more and more lives. The tricky trade-offs between the benefits a treatment might bring and the tolls it might exact
will become decisions faced by all. Athletes who refuse drugs may eventually come to be seen as quaint anachronisms, a touch perverse even if
oddly admirable—rather in the way that vegetarians were a few decades
ago, or those who champion vinyl over CDs are today.
People have long since moved beyond a state of nature in the ways
in which they make things, go places, reproduce themselves and spend
Saturday nights. In the next century our bodies will move farther and farther from the imperfect state in which evolution left them before being
interrupted by medicine. The boundary between the human and the
technological will become increasingly blurred. In this the man-machine
symbiosis of competitive cycling, the quintessential cyborg sport, shows
the way. The technological redefinition of the human will be the cultural
main event of the coming century. By showing that what we value in the
human spirit can survive this new symbiosis, sport can play a vital part in
it. But only if the drugged and the undrugged are treated equally.
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The Health Risks of
Steroid Use Have
Been Exaggerated
Rick Collins
Rick Collins is a bodybuilder and criminal defense attorney in New York
state who has defended dozens of clients involved with the use and sale
of anabolic steroid products.
The medical establishment’s characterization of steroids as dangerous is a scare tactic promulgated to preserve the “purity” of athletic competition. Past studies concluding that steroids are ineffective at promoting muscle growth and cause irreversible side
effects are not credible and were based on faulty methodology.
While there are health risks associated with steroid use, particularly for women and adolescents, recent research indicates that adverse side effects, such as liver damage and psychiatric problems,
have been highly overstated. Forty years of steroid use by athletes
provides no evidence of a serious health crisis or epidemic of
steroid-related deaths. Congress should reconsider its ban on the
non-medical use of steroids by athletes.
W
hile the primary objective of Congress in classifying anabolic
steroids as controlled substances (and criminalizing their use) was
probably to solve the pharmacologic “cheating” problem in competition
sports, the reported health risks associated with these “deadly drugs” provided a seemingly valid basis for the legislation. The reportedly devastating health hazards were used to justify a policy favoring imprisonment of
athletes involved with steroids over allowing them to “destroy themselves”
with these substances. But would such a policy be appropriate if the real
health dangers to healthy adult males were actually significantly less than
the members of Congress—and the general public—have been led to believe? An unbiased review of the medical and scientific evidence of risks to
healthy adult males is necessary in order to understand and assess the legitimacy of our current national approach to the “steroid problem.”
From “Health Risks of Anabolic Steroids,” by Rick Collins, www.steroidlaw.com, 1999. Copyright
© 1999 by Rick Collins. Reprinted with permission.
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Medical hyperbole
Regrettably, the medical and scientific community has historically been
less than truthful in presenting information about anabolic steroids to
the general public. For example, for many years their position was that
steroids do not build muscle. . . . Even as late as 1984, in the highly publicized anti-steroid book Death in the Locker Room: Steroids & Sports, thenmedical student Bob Goldman seriously presented his theory about how
steroids work in a subchapter devoted to the “placebo effect.” It is unclear
whether such faulty opinions were based upon ignorance of the overwhelming anecdotal evidence or upon an attempt to protect the public
by concealing the truth. Whatever the reason, “[t]he medical community
lost much credibility as a result of repeated denials that [steroids] enhance
performance,” [according to Charles Yesalis and Virginia Cowart in The
Steroids Game]. Of course, the athletes themselves knew decades earlier
about the dramatic effects of anabolics on sports performance and appearance. While today the medical establishment concedes that there is
no doubt that anabolic steroids do indeed work (perhaps too well), its previous position created a tremendous distrust within the athletic community and led to an often recognized polarization between the groups
which may never be undone.
Athletes are convinced that doctors and the
government advance the “side effect” argument
mostly as a scare tactic.
Regarding anabolic steroid side effects and health hazards, the position of the medical community has been mostly linked to hyperbolic, hysterical works like Death in the Locker Room. The mainstream media, always
seeking the sensationalism of a “big story,” conveyed such material to the
public as if it were gospel truth. With no personal experience to the contrary, the average American accepts this characterization of steroids as
dangerous killer drugs. On the other hand, many strength athletes are convinced that doctors and the government advance the “side effect” argument mostly as a scare tactic to preserve the “purity” of athletic competition. They have amassed their own body of underground anecdotal
evidence derived from their observations of side effects on themselves and
on their peers, or from “underground” treatises on self-administration of
steroids. “Athletes using anabolic steroids today have a sophisticated pharmacologic knowledge base for using these agents that surpasses that of the
vast majority of physicians. For this reason, traditional warnings regarding
the lack of efficacy and the potential dangers of steroid abuse are universally held in contempt. Today, it appears that the experts on anabolic
steroid use in athletic competition are not medical clinicians but the athletes [themselves],” [according to researcher P.J. Perry].
Unreliable anabolic steroid research
Several problems have affected much of the past research into anabolic
steroid effects. Until very recently, it was considered unethical for re-
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searchers to administer the highly supraphysiologic dosages necessary to
simulate use patterns of established steroid users. Therefore, most human
studies involved steroid users self-reporting their histories of dosages and
duration of use, rather than any controlled administration by the researchers. The reliability problems with this methodology have been
noted by experts in the field. Only recently have researchers begun to
administer more substantial dosages for short-term periods, simulating
the moderate-dose steroid cycles used by some athletes.
No case of permanent sterility as a result of
prolonged high-dose steroid consumption has ever
been reliably documented.
Another problem plaguing steroid research has been lack of funding.
However, the growing interest in anabolic steroids for anti-aging and
AIDS therapies may prompt grants for further research. Perhaps the most
enlightening research would be retrospective cohort studies examining
the health condition, cancer prevalence and mortality statistics of professional bodybuilders from the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s. With such studies, the long-term health ramifications of steroid use finally would be
known and quantified. Regrettably, grant proposals to conduct such studies have been repeatedly turned down. Of course, a finding that there are
generally no statistically significant long-term adverse effects (especially
with moderate dosages and intermittent use) could encourage or increase
non-medical steroid use, and might call into question our present national policy of criminalizing steroid users. Consequently, it is unlikely
that a strong anti-steroid authority like the National Institute on Drug
Abuse, a frequent sponsor of steroid research, will ever approve or fund
such a study.
Anabolic steroid use by women and teenagers
Without question, there are health risks involved in the self-administration
of any prescription medicine, particularly in the absence of a physician’s
advice with respect to dosages and duration of use. Further, without regular monitoring by a doctor, some side effects may go unnoticed or untreated until it is too late. Anabolic steroids can have adverse effects upon
the body, and the risks for teenagers and women are higher than for adult
males. Since large exogenous doses of androgens are more foreign to a
woman’s body than to a man’s, their effect on the delicate hormonal balance of a woman is more profound. Excessive growth of body hair (hirsutism), coarsening of the skin, male pattern baldness, and deepening of
the voice may occur (especially at massive dosages) and are generally not
reversible upon discontinuance of steroids. Other possible effects particular to women include heavy facial masculinization, breast tissue reduction, alterations in menstrual cycles, and clitoral enlargement. Legal issues aside, any woman considering the use of high-dose androgens for
physical enhancement must seriously weigh the perceived benefits
against the quite unappealing potential cosmetic costs.
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For teenagers, there is the additional risk of premature closure of the
growth plates of the long bones. Even if not for this added risk, the selfadministration of anabolics by teenagers must be strongly discouraged. As
compared to mature adults, teenagers are much more likely to abuse anabolic steroids to the possible detriment of their health. Generally less focused upon long-range health than adults, more susceptible to peer pressure, and eager for fast results, teenagers are more likely to use anabolics
in dangerously high dosages and without any medical supervision. Also,
as it is recognized that the effects of anabolics upon size and strength are
partially (and sometimes even completely) temporary, teens seem particularly less willing to suffer these post-cycle size and strength reductions,
and are more likely to continuously use high-dose steroids for prolonged
periods. Even Dan Duchaine, author of the Underground Steroid Handbook
II and a favorite target of the proponents of steroid criminalization, is opposed to steroid use by teenagers. Clearly, even in countries where
steroids can be legally obtained without a prescription, it is this writer’s
opinion that the choice to use them for physical enhancement should be
made by mature, informed adults with a pre-established dedication to serious weight-training for several years. Anabolic steroids should never be
used by beginning lifters, those with dubious commitments to weighttraining, or those simply seeking a substitute for hard work. . . .
Adverse effects of excess androgens
The average adult male production of testosterone is less than 10 milligrams (mg) per day. Supplemental androgens can raise blood androgen
levels to many times the amount that could be naturally produced. All
these extra androgens will effect the body’s hormonal balance, including
the reproductive system. Because anabolics mimic endogenous androgens
(i.e., your own natural testosterone) in the negative feedback loop of the
hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis, they cause the body to decrease its
own production. Exactly how long it takes for the body to begin to shut
down its own production of androgens is uncertain, although some have
estimated it at about three weeks of steroid therapy. This induced hypogonadal state is characterized by decreased serum testosterone levels, associated testicular atrophy, and impaired sperm production that results in
temporary infertility. It is this aspect of anabolic therapy that has been
the focus of numerous studies testing the use of anabolics as a form of
male contraception. But it is important to note that these effects are reversible with discontinuance of the steroids, and that no case of permanent sterility as a result of prolonged high-dose steroid consumption has
ever been reliably documented.
Recent studies continue to suggest that reports of
serious adverse effects of anabolic steroids . . . may
be highly overstated.
Steroid use can also effect the libido. It is common for the sex drive
to heighten during a cycle but decrease toward the end and after because
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the body’s own production of testosterone has been temporarily shut
down due to the exogenous steroids. Decreased testicular size is also not
uncommon with prolonged usage. Both of these adverse effects are reversible upon the body’s own recuperation and often can be avoided altogether with the administration of gonadotropin stimulating drugs,
which “jump-start” the body’s natural production of testosterone.
“High dose equals high risk, . . . [but] low-dose
[steroids] . . . pose little threat to health.”
Other adverse effects of excessive androgens upon the body’s system
of hormones are primarily due to the eventual conversion of the androgens into other compounds. Steroid molecules in the body are eventually
converted into other compounds or excreted in the urine. Testosterone
can be converted by an enzymatic process into a slightly altered derivative hormone called dihydrotestosterone (DHT), a steroid molecule that
may be significantly responsible for these adverse effects. Adverse effects
of an androgenic nature occur because muscles are not the only parts of
the body with receptor sites for steroid molecules, and because a steroid
molecule has the potential to deliver several different messages. Which
message the steroid molecule delivers depends upon the location of the
receptor site to which it links. A steroid molecule linking to a receptor site
in a hair follicle may deliver a message to stop growing (leading to male
pattern baldness). One linking to a site in a sebaceous gland may deliver
a message to produce more oil (leading to acne). One linking to a site in
the prostate gland may deliver a message for the gland to enlarge (leading to prostatitis). The occurrence and extent of these adverse effects depend upon the concentration of receptor sites for steroid molecules in
that particular area. Each individual is different. For example, male pattern baldness can be exacerbated in athletes who have a genetic predisposition. Steroids with a high conversion rate to DHT seem to be particularly responsible for this adverse effect, and should be avoided. Also, the
effect can be partially controlled by the use of finasteride (Proscar or
Propecia), a prescription drug which helps to block the conversion of
testosterone to DHT.
The appearance of androgenic effects is also largely related to the
dosage and to the choice of steroid. Highly androgenic steroids such as
testosterone esters, especially in very large doses, will generally be much
more prone to cause problems than highly anabolic, less androgenic
drugs like methenolone or oxandrolone. However, recent research suggests that the side effects of even highly androgenic compounds have
been overstated. There were no significant side effects of 10 weeks of
testosterone enanthate at a dosage of 600 mg per week (six times the replacement dose of this highly androgenic ester and more than many
bodybuilders might use). (In a discouraging kick in the pants to natural
athletes everywhere, study participants receiving the testosterone injections without any exercise at all enjoyed significantly greater increases in
fat-free mass, arm size and leg size than those who worked out hard but
without the steroids.) Other studies have also reported minimal signifi-
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cant androgenic side effects, including one involving the highly androgenic oral steroid oxymetholone. Androgens also have the capacity to be
converted into estrogen by chemical reactions and enzymes within certain body tissues. The process by which the steroid molecule is converted
to estrogen is called aromatization. Those anabolics that are easily aromatized into estrogen can cause a feminization of the breast tissue known
as gynecomastia. While largely dose related, a natural propensity for this
condition can cause it to occur even in moderate dosages. This condition
can often be avoided or arrested by the judicious use of anti-estrogenic
compounds. Once a serious cosmetic problem exists, minor surgery is required to correct it. Numerous professional bodybuilders have had this
surgery and others obviously need it (look closely at a very top place finisher in the 1998 Mr. Olympia lineup).
Anabolic steroids and the liver
Anabolic steroids are processed by the liver. C-17 alkylated oral steroids
(steroids with an alkyl group added at the alpha position of the “C-17” or
number 17 carbon atom of the molecule to withstand total degradation
on their first pass through the liver) are unusually harsh on the liver. For
this reason, even moderate short-term administration of these C-17 oral
steroids can effect liver function test readings. Elevated liver counts indicating liver stress (toxicity) have been reported in recent studies of somewhat moderate oral anabolic steroid therapy (daily doses of 40 and 80 mg
of oxandrolone [Oxandrin, formerly Anavar]) as reported in the online
periodical Medibolics, edited by Michael Mooney (www.medibolics.com).
However, these elevated liver function readings will return to normal after cessation of a moderate, short-term steroid cycle. I could find not one
case to the contrary. Further, it is recognized that intense weight training
alone often causes changes in liver function tests, including SGOT, SGPT
and LDH (this is something that all physicians monitoring athletes using
anabolics should be familiar with).
While normal guys will train more aggressively [on
steroids], they won’t generally become violent.
The more serious liver problems attributed to anabolic steroid use include hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer) and peliosis hepatitis
(blood-filled sacs within the liver). But the majority of cases reporting
liver problems have dealt with extremely sick and elderly patients treated
with C-17 alkylated oral steroids for years of continuous use, and many
of these patients had a particular type of anemia linked to liver tumors
even without anabolic steroid therapy. A computer search of the medical
literature looking for steroid-associated liver tumors could find only three
in athletes. Of the three athletes, one was using 700 mg of oxymetholone
a week for five straight years, and one had a tumor more indicative of
classic liver cancer than of steroid-associated tumors. Virtually all of the
reported liver problems seemed to occur with the 17 alpha-alkylated oral
steroids. There have been no cysts or liver tumors reported in athletes us-
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ing the 17 beta-esterified injectable steroids. It has been noted that injectable steroids generally appear to have little effect on the liver at all.
Recent studies continue to suggest that reports of serious adverse effects of anabolic steroids upon the liver in healthy athletes may be highly
overstated. In a study of athletes, of the 53 current or past steroid users
who underwent laboratory testing, only one subject displayed an abnormal liver test (incidentally, on physical examination, not one user displayed evidence of any major abnormalities possibly attributable to
steroids, such as high blood pressure, edema, acne or hair loss.) Another
study tested one of the most powerful and reputedly dangerously toxic
anabolic steroids for 30 weeks on HIV positive men and women. Oxymetholone, formerly known as Anadrol in the U.S. and a C-17 alkylated
oral steroid, was administered in a dosage of over 1,000 mg per week
(more than that used by many bodybuilders, and for a much longer duration of uninterrupted use). The results were significant gains in lean
muscle mass—even without any weightlifting. Even more importantly—
and surprisingly—there were no significant problems with liver function,
water retention, or virilization side effects (it will be interesting to see
whether further studies yield consistent findings at such high dosages).
While the dangers of anabolics to athletes’ livers appear to have been
highly exaggerated, it must be recognized that an apparently healthy athlete with a previously existing but undiscovered liver problem could do
serious damage to himself by self-administering C-17 oral anabolic
steroids. For this reason alone, it would be quite irresponsible for any athlete to use anabolic steroids without having a physician regularly conduct
blood tests to monitor liver function.
Anabolic steroids and the heart
How cardiac risk might be increased by the use of steroids is a subject of
speculation and some controversy. High blood pressure is perhaps “one
of the most exaggerated claims” of steroid-related health risks [according
to K.E. Friedl], and remains unconfirmed despite numerous studies. Regarding blood lipid levels, oral steroids in particular seem to cause a reduction in HDL (high-density lipoprotein cholesterol) levels in some
steroid users. However, changes in the blood lipid levels now appear to
begin to recover within about a month after discontinued use, and, in
fact, most studies do not report an increase in total cholesterol.
In examining cardiovascular risks, often cited is a case report by R.A.
McNutt, et al, 1988, concerning a 22-year-old steroid-using weightlifter
who experienced a sudden heart attack. While often held out by antisteroid authorities as the “smoking gun” connecting steroid use to heart
attacks, a reading of the actual report reveals that the subject weighed 330
pounds and had a total serum cholesterol of a whopping 596 mg/dl! The
fact that so few similar case studies exist may well indicate that the condition of this individual was hardly representative of the majority of athletes who use steroids. Nonetheless, all strength athletes, including
steroid users, should regularly monitor serum cholesterol. Obviously, this
poor fellow didn’t get his cholesterol to 596 overnight, and it is not reported when he last visited a physician prior to his heart attack. To what
extent our nation’s criminalization approach to steroids, which discour-
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ages steroid-users from seeing doctors, contributed to this result is open
to speculation.
While the question of whether short-term, reversible alterations of
these cardiac risk factors are detrimental to long-term cardiac health is
“unanswered” at this time, it has been suggested that some characteristics
of steroid-users—intense exercising, low body fat, and avoidance of smoking—tend to put them in a low-risk group for heart disease.
Based on our present information, cardiac risks seem to be primarily
related to high dosages in the absence of physician monitoring. Jose Antonio, PhD., a nationally recognized authority on drugs in sports who has
written a monthly column for Flex magazine, cites a study examining serious cardiovascular side effects in four weightlifters using “massive
amounts” of steroids. While there is little doubt that the health problems
of these men were caused by their anabolic steroid abuse, these were
clearly mega-dose abusers. “[H]igh dose equals high risk,” notes Dr. Antonio, but “low-dose androgens (e.g., 200–600 mg per week for 10 weeks)
pose little threat to health.”
Anabolic steroids and the prostate
A legitimate concern is the potential adverse effect of excessive androgens
on the prostate gland. While there is one case report of prostate cancer in
a bodybuilder, no studies have shown an increased risk or incidence of
prostatic cancer or hypertrophy with androgen use or indicated that androgens per se predispose to these conditions. Numerous male contraceptive studies using up to 200 mg/week for over a year show no evidence
of prostate stimulation. Researchers at the University of Iowa recently examined the prostate effects of the administration for 15 weeks of up to
500 mg/week to healthy men in their twenties and thirties. No changes
in prostate size or serum prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels were detected either during or up to 25 weeks after the last dose. Further, androgens are not the only or even the main causative factor in prostate cancer, as evinced by a case study in which a chronically testosterone
deficient man developed prostate cancer. Warning: this does not necessarily mean that much higher dosages, especially of highly androgenic
compounds, might not adversely effect the prostate, especially in older
men. It is not known if athletes who have used steroids for prolonged periods will encounter more prostatic problems as they age.
Anabolic steroids and aggressive/psychiatric symptoms
Enormous media attention has been focused upon the reported adverse
psychiatric effects (especially violent behavior) of steroid use. “Roid rage”
is the descriptive term for steroid-induced “spontaneous, highly aggressive, out-of-control behavior where the police either were called or should
have intervened,” [according to Charles Yesalis and Virginia Cowart]. A
few researchers have suggested that psychiatric symptoms including increased aggression are a common side effect of anabolic steroid use. For example, a flawed 1988 study suggested that psychiatric disorders occur with
unusual frequency among athletes using anabolics. But the conclusions of
these researchers have been regarded with skepticism by other experts. “If
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this phenomenon is real, it is relatively rare (probably less than 1 percent)
among steroid users. Even among those affected, the impact of previous
mental illness or abuse of other drugs is still unclear,” [according to
Charles Yesalis and Virginia Cowart]. “Some long-time steroid users have
never suffered any emotional instability, or anything more than transient
physical effects” and many steroid users describe non-violent feelings of
euphoria, well-being and enhanced self-confidence as common effects,
[according to J.E. Wright and Virginia Cowart]. In one study [conducted
by M.S. Bahrke et al.] to determine the psychiatric effects of steroid use on
athletes, no significant differences could be found between users and nonusers. “The facts that steroids have been used by tens of thousands if not
hundreds of thousands of athletes over two decades and that behavioral
effects are only recently being discovered (in small numbers) tend to support [that feelings of aggression may not be observed in the majority of
steroid users]. Our findings are compatible with and complementary to
those in anecdotal reports and data from individual psychiatrists.” The researchers do not rule out, however, the possibility that in a small minority of predisposed individuals, “steroid use may be sufficient to push them
over the edge and contribute to irrational or violent behavior.” Many experienced steroid users have found that steroids enhance certain preexisting personality problems. Angry and combative users will become angrier
and more combative; however, while normal guys will train more aggressively, they won’t generally become violent.
Despite over forty years of use by athletes, . . . we
have yet to hear reports of an epidemic of steroidrelated deaths.
Not surprisingly, when psychiatric problems do occur in study subjects, there seems to be a direct correlation between dosage and prevalence of syndromes. For example, no significant psychiatric effects have
been noted where reported mean weekly dosage was 318 mg (heaviest
user was 620 mg/wk). But where reported dosage exceeded 1,000 mg/wk,
11 out of 25 subjects (44%) exhibited mood disorders. While, based on
this and other studies, there is a dose-related correlation between steroid
use and psychiatric effects, it must be noted that not all steroid users exhibit such symptoms; in fact, nearly 90% of light and moderate dosage
users in this particular study exhibited no mood disorder symptoms at all.
The psychiatric effect that massive amounts of anabolics might have
upon predisposed individuals has created a new defense in criminal cases.
Just as voluntary alcohol intoxication can be used to negate the specific
intent required for certain crimes, so has voluntary ingestion of anabolic
steroids been offered in the defense of various violent crimes in an effort
to prove that the accused was unable to distinguish right from wrong or
to understand the consequences of his acts. A sampling of these cases reveals, generally, that such defenses were unsuccessfully raised. This may
be due in part to the fact that in many cases the dosages administered
were either not specified or were too low to be persuasive. A bigger factor
may be the general reluctance of juries to acquit in murder cases based on
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insanity defenses, especially where the insanity was caused by a voluntarily consumed substance.
Anabolic steroids and psychological dependence
There is some evidence that anabolic steroid use can lead to psychological
dependence in certain individuals. Whether the dependence is due to
chemical effects upon the brain or simply because of the positive reinforcement occasioned by a more muscular physique is not known. Whatever the cause, this may be the most dangerous aspect of steroid use for
those it affects. The cessation of steroid use, especially after a prolonged cycle, often leaves the user in a state of low endogenous testosterone levels.
For individuals with an inadequate sense of self, the loss of some portion
of the steroid gains can be psychologically devastating to the ego. These
individuals can be unable to resist immediately resuming steroid use. Further, as the goal of hardcore bodybuilders is not optimal muscle size, but
maximal muscle size, dosages can become excessive. While many athletes
successfully use steroids intermittently and with moderation, it is a sobering thought that there are certain individuals who start out on low risk,
short-term cycles and ultimately end up using massive dosages for years of
uninterrupted use. It might be theorized that the problem of dependence
on steroids by certain bodybuilders has less to do with the nature of the
substance than with the psychological profile of the users.
Other adverse effects of anabolic steroids
• Connective tissue injuries. The medical literature regarding the suggestion
of increased athletic injuries caused by anabolic steroid use is scant. It is
not unreasonable to expect muscle and tendon tears in hardcore strength
athletes, regardless of steroid use. However, the exceptional frequency
and severity (often requiring surgical reattachment) of such injuries in
professional level bodybuilders do raise suspicions as to the possibility
that steroids, diuretics, or other drugs may be implicated. Former Mr.
Olympia Dorian Yates has suffered training-related injuries to the chest,
leg and biceps, and retired after a major triceps injury. Pro bodybuilder
Alq Gurley reportedly completely tore the quadriceps muscles in both
legs when he fell while simply walking! Whether these injuries are
steroid-related is as yet unknown, although some animal studies have
suggested that steroids may cause tendon degeneration and increased risk
of tendon rupture. It may not be unreasonable to assume that, like many
adverse steroid effects, connective tissue injuries are mostly associated
with high-dose, prolonged usage.
• AIDS. Many articles include this as a possible consequence. Quite
frankly, anyone who would even consider sharing needles with his gym
buddies in this day and age is so irresponsible and judgment-impaired
that the substance of this entire article is lost on him.
• Premature Closure of Growth Plates. Chronic steroid usage prior to puberty or in early adolescence can cause premature closure of the growth
plates of the long bones, preventing the young user from attaining full
natural height. For this reason as well as others previously discussed, teenagers should not use steroids for muscle building.
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The dangers of counterfeit steroids
One of the primary effects of our government’s crackdown on legitimate
anabolic steroids has been the expansion of a huge black market of counterfeit products. While estimates vary widely, many authorities assert that
the majority of anabolics available on the black market are fakes. These
counterfeits are manufactured under unsupervised and potentially unsanitary conditions, and may contain no real androgens at all. They may
also be contaminated with bacteria or other dangerous substances. Noted
steroid expert Dr. Robert Price: “My colleagues at Mount Sinai Hospital in
New York tell me they are treating many more athletes for side effects of
counterfeit and bogus steroids than they did when reliable pharmacypurchased steroids were available.”
If the health dangers of real anabolic steroids have been overstated,
the dangers of counterfeit anabolics may be understated. The problem is
particularly serious because of how difficult it is to distinguish a real product from a counterfeit knock-off. . . .
It can be concluded that “[a]s used by most athletes, the side effects of
anabolic steroid use appear to be minimal,” [according to M.G. DiPasquale].
Despite over forty years of use by athletes, many of whom are now well into
middle-age, we have yet to hear reports of an epidemic of steroid-related
deaths. A review of the medical literature does not support the depiction of
a serious health crisis related to anabolic steroids. Of course, it would be untrue to say that anabolic steroids, especially black market products, are safe
for unsupervised, unmonitored self-administration. On the other hand, it
would be equally untrue to say that anabolics are “deadly drugs” deserving
of the imposition of harsh criminal penalties for personal use by adults. Accordingly, there is a serious question as to whether Congress may have
grossly overreacted in addressing the non-medical use of anabolic steroids
by athletes.
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One Strike, You’re Out
Mark Starr
Mark Starr is a sports columnist for Newsweek magazine.
Olympic officials have begun to take the widespread abuse of
performance-enhancing drugs by Olympic athletes seriously. The
crackdown comes in response to fears that fans and sponsors will
no longer support the Olympics if drug scandals become a regular
feature of the Games. Newly established anti-doping agencies have
increased the investment in drug tests designed to keep pace with
drug cheats, who continually use new drugs and masking agents to
beat the tests. A successful program of random drug testing was
also introduced prior to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake
City, leaving drug-using athletes with less opportunity to render
their drug intake undetectable before competitions.
L
udmila Engquist dreamed of making Olympic history by becoming
the first woman ever to win gold medals at both the summer and winter games. Engquist, a Russian-born Swede, had won the 100-meter hurdles in Atlanta in 1996. Now she was taking aim at gold again, this time
around in the inaugural women’s bobsled competition at the Salt Lake
City Olympics next February.
But this week Engquist made history a bit prematurely—and not in
glory on the Olympic–medal podium, but rather in sad, even tragic, fashion. She became the first Olympic athlete, man or woman, who has ever
been caught using illegal drugs in two different sports.
Back in 1993, Engquist tested positive for steroids at a track meet and
was banned from competition for four years. But a Russian court cleared
her when her husband claimed he had spiked her protein powder as revenge after she filed for divorce. After two years, her suspension was lifted
by the international track federation, enabling her to triumph in Atlanta.
Her defense was typical of virtually every Olympic athlete ever caught
with drugs in their system: first denials; then challenges of the testing
procedures; finally, insistence that the illegal substance must have been
in their diet supplement or that their Coca-Cola was spiked. Or perhaps a
Neptunian drifted down from outer space one night and injected them
From “One Strike, You’re Out,” by Mark Starr, Newsweek, November 8, 2001. Copyright © 2001 by
Newsweek, Inc. Reprinted with permission.
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while they slept. No athlete ever simply fessed up and said, “OK. You
caught me. I did it. I’m guilty. I’m sorry.”
Which means that Engquist made another sort of history, too. Because this time she, so to speak, came clean. Caught in a random test before a practice run in Norway, Engquist later faxed a letter to the Swedish
news agency TT, saying, “I took drugs secretly . . . I did something terrible and I feel terribly bad.” At least as remarkable was the fact that Engquist confessed to using steroids before the test had actually been analyzed, which means she must have been caught, at least metaphorically,
with the needle practically in her arm. Engquist had been widely admired
as something of a heroic figure in track when she took a bronze medal in
the 1999 world championships just a few months after undergoing a mastectomy and chemotherapy for breast cancer. In the fax, she said she was
so distraught at being caught cheating that she had attempted suicide.
Olympic officials realize that . . . the scourge of
illegal, performance-enhancing drugs remains the
greatest threat of all.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, no subject concerning the
impending Salt Lake Olympics will be discussed more than security. The
International Olympic Committee as well as U.S. and Salt Lake Olympic
officials will all repeat again and again, quite truthfully, that the safety of
the athletes and spectators is paramount in their minds. But Olympic officials realize that, in the long run, the scourge of illegal, performanceenhancing drugs remains the greatest threat of all. After a succession of
scandals—from East Germany to China, from sprinter Ben Johnson to
Irish swimmer Michelle Smith to American shot-putter C.J. Hunter—most
Olympic insiders believe that drug abuse remains rampant in Olympic
competition. If the fans ever truly catch on to the dimensions of the problem, they will turn off, sponsors will flee and the world’s biggest athletic
empire will crumble.
To the extent that fans are aware of the drug problem, they tend to
associate it with the summer Olympics, most notably with swimming and
track and field. But it is epidemic at the Winter Olympics, as well, especially in sports that Americans regard as minor such as bobsled, speedskating and Nordic skiing. Earlier this year a misplaced medical bag led to
a scandal that rocked Finland, where its Nordic skiing stars were viewed
as every bit as pristine as the surface they traversed. The bag, belonging
to the Finnish Ski Association, contained needles, syringes and drugs used
to manipulate blood-cell counts. Six Finnish skiing stars were eventually
banned from competition for two years after testing positive for an illegal
substance often used to mask the human growth hormone EPO. Among
them was Harri Kirvesniemi, a Finnish legend who has competed in six
Olympics and won 11 medals.
For years now, it has taken just such a freak occurrence to expose
widespread cheating. With drug testing largely restricted to competition
medallists, “the only athlete you could catch was the dumb one,” says
Terry Madden, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), the
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new independent agency that will handle American compliance. While
this country leads the world in finger-pointing, it has not pursued its own
athletes with any particular vigor. And when American athletes have
been caught, authorities here have usually taken the same charitable view
of their denials and convoluted explanations as the Russian court did
with Engquist, indeed as virtually every country does with its own.
But with an endless succession of scandals, the recognition of the potential threat to the Olympic movement and some increased political
pressure, the international community is finally paying more than lip service to the matter. A Toronto-based worldwide antidoping agency, similar to the new American one, has been established. With them has finally
come some significant financial investment in new drug tests that could
challenge the conventional wisdom that the cheaters, with their resources, will always be at least one step ahead in developing new drugs
and masking agents. “The belief has always been that we can never
change this,” says Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who as U.S. drug czar was highly
critical of the enforcement efforts in athletics. “But it looks like in the
coming 10 years—if the international cooperation continues on the science and the political will is maintained to enforce—we could see a major change.”
Along with the science, the key change is the implementation of a
massive program of random testing. Sophisticated coaches and athletes
can manage a drug regimen that is invisible by the time of competitions.
But if enforcement’s new mantra becomes “any time, anywhere,” the riskreward equation is seriously altered. Approximately 75 percent of the athletes coming to compete in Salt Lake will have been tested in the past year,
but only about a third of those tests will have been random. By Athens,
enforcement officials are hopeful that 100 percent of all competitors will
have undergone tests with at least half of those random. “For a long time
now the clean athletes have been feeling at both a physiological and psychological disadvantage,” says the USADA’s Madden. “We’re turning that
around and giving back the clean athlete the advantage.”
It is also essential that the various international and national governing bodies stick to a no-tolerance policy. “If it’s in your system, then
you’re guilty,” says Madden. The athlete must be responsible for what’s
in their body, thus relieving enforcers of the impossible task of sorting
out the truths, half-truths and lies. Some athletes may be innocently
tainted, but that’s the only way to target the far greater number of cheats.
That’s why, as unfair as it may have seemed at the time, it was right to
strip 16-year-old Romanian gymnast Andrea Raducan of her gold medal
in Sydney—even if, as she insisted, the illegal stimulant was taken unwittingly in an over-the-counter cold medication and may not even have
been beneficial to her performance.
Some experts remain skeptical of both the commitment of the international athletic community and its ability to catch, as well as catch up
to, the cheaters. But this week, as Engquist was confessing her guilt, the
suspension of a world-ranked American swimmer, Michael Picotte, was
also announced. His suspension came after he refused to take an out-ofcompetition test. The game has changed for Olympic hopefuls. And finally, thankfully, it’s one strike, and you’re out.
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Performance-Enhancing
Drug Testing Is Ineffective
Anonymous
The author was intimately involved in drug testing for a variety of sports.
The International Olympic Committee and other sports organizations use ineffective performance-enhancing drug testing techniques and remain insincere about catching drug-using athletes.
Claims that drug use is declining as a result of tougher testing, as
evidenced by the low number of positive drug test results, are false,
since there are many methods that athletes can employ to beat
drug tests. In addition, athletes with access to money and support
personnel stand a better chance of passing the tests than athletes
who lack such resources, making the drug testing system unfair.
I
f I told you I was committed to an effort and was going to spend one
million dollars of my money on a project, wouldn’t that seem like a sincere effort? Now let’s say you find out from a reliable source that the one
million dollars represents mere pennies to me because I have tons of
money. Then you find out that the project I was supposedly committed to
is last on my funding list as far as financial commitment. Does it still seem
like a high priority? This is the case with drug testing. In general, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and other organizations talk a good
game, but in reality, they are not sincere in their drug testing efforts. The
historical evidence shows a repeating sequence of events since the implementation of drug testing: athletes take drugs, organizations develop tests,
athletes beat tests, organizations come out with new tests, athletes beat
tests, and so on. You get the point. Each time a new test is developed, drug
testing officials release statements to the media indicating how sensitive
the new techniques are. The tests get implemented and a very small percentage of athletes test positive for some type of banned substance. The
drug testing officials then claim that based on their latest information,
drug use is declining. This is comical, given all the data that indicates junior high school, high school, recreational, amateur and professional athletes are using steroids and other drugs. Yet somehow the IOC and other
From “The History of Drug Testing in Sports and How Athletes Beat the Drug Tests,” by
Anonymous, www.meso-rx.com, 2002. Copyright © 2002 by MESO/Rx.com. Reprinted with
permission.
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organizations want us to believe that they are cleaning things up based on
the low number of positive drug test results. Given all the data that indicates drug use is prevalent, I feel that what the low numbers of positive
drug tests actually indicate is how inadequate drug testing methods are.
Basic overview of drug testing
Prohibited and restricted drugs fall into three main categories: (1) shortor immediate-acting stimulants and beta-blockers, (2) anabolic agents,
and (3) masking agents. Stimulants and beta-blockers tend to affect performance only if taken just before the event. Drug testing for this category of drugs is believed to be very effective. Based on drug testing data,
stimulant use has been essentially abolished from high-level sports because they are detected so easily. Anabolic agents usually require weeks to
obtain the desired effect and are sometimes referred to as training drugs.
The training drugs are inherently more difficult to detect and can be discontinued in time to pass an announced or anticipated test. Masking
agents are drugs that affect the detectability of other drugs. Examples of
masking agents are diuretics, probenecid, and epitestosterone. These
drugs are only useful at the time of the test and, except for epitestosterone, are relatively easy to detect. . . .
What the low numbers of positive drug tests actually
indicate is how inadequate drug testing methods are.
On an annual basis, over 100,000 drug tests are conducted worldwide
at a cost of $30 million. The drug tests are designed to detect and deter
abuse of performance-enhancing drugs by competitors. The testing procedures for drug abuse in sport are strict and at times deemed unfair. They
are deemed unfair because athletes are responsible for knowing what is
banned despite the fact that additions are made almost daily to the list of
banned substances. This has prompted researchers to recommend to athletes that the best possible solution is to avoid all drugs unless listed on
the allowed substance list. The IOC has decided that drug tests will require confirmation, whenever possible, by gas chromatography and mass
spectrometry, which define several chemical features of an abused drug,
in effect producing a drug fingerprint. In addition, prior to the 1996
Olympic Games in Atlanta, the IOC required competitors to agree to a
contract that prohibited them from taking any action beyond arbitration
if they failed a drug test.
When athletes know when a drug test will occur, they can prepare for
it and thereby neutralize the effects of drug testing on the use of
performance-enhancing drugs and/or masking agents. Year-round shortnotice and no-notice testing are the most effective means to curtail the
use of training drugs because they make athletes always at risk to be
tested. Sports have recently begun to invest in this type of testing despite
the high cost and difficulty in administration. Some countries claim to
have achieved no-notice testing. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and international federations for swimming and
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weightlifting conduct year-round, short-notice testing. In the United
States, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the National Football League (NFL) have short-notice (1–2 days) programs, and
the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) has approved the implementation of a no-notice program.
Obtaining a urine sample
The drug testing procedure begins with taking a urine sample. While this
sounds simple, it initiates a formal and highly regulated procedure to ensure that the urine sample that arrives at the laboratory actually comes
from the athlete in question, with no opportunity to tamper with the
sample. Why is urine used and not blood or other tissues? There are several reasons. Blood draws would require medical or paramedical staff and
hence incur additional costs.1 Other tissues may not be valid for analysis
under all conditions. Once selected for drug testing, the athlete is notified
by an official and asked to sign a form acknowledging this notification.
The athlete may or may not be accompanied by an official and must attend the testing station within the designated period. The testing station
is supposed to be a private, comfortable place where plenty of drinks are
available. Many times it is set up inside a specially designed mobile testing unit. Independent sampling officers, whom are trained and appointed
by the respective governing body, carry out the collection of urine samples. Each officer carries a time-limited identity card and a letter of authority for the event to which they are allocated.
The whole idea behind drug testing is to have a level
playing field. Yet, in reality, this system is inherently
unfair.
Before giving a urine sample, the athlete is told to select two numbered bottles. After providing the sample (about 100 ml), the athlete must
voluntarily complete a form. The athlete declares any drug treatment
taken in the previous seven days and must check and sign that the sample has been taken and placed in the bottles correctly. The urine sample
is then sent for analysis to a laboratory currently accredited by the IOC.
In the event of a positive test result, the laboratory will notify the governing body of the sport, who will then notify the athlete. The rules of
the governing body of the particular sport determine what happens next.
The rules vary across governing bodies, sports, and countries. An athlete
is usually suspended while a positive result is investigated, but has the
right to have a second analysis of the urine sample. This analysis may be
observed directly by the athlete or by the athlete’s representative. There
follows a hearing, at which time the athlete’s case is presented. An appeal
can be made, and there have been successful appeals both in the United
States and other countries. . . .
1. Blood testing was introduced at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games for the banned drug erythropoietin (EPO).
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At the elite level, athletes are subject to year-round random testing.
At any time, an independent sampling officer may call unannounced and
request a urine sample. While this comes across straightforward on paper,
in practice there are many difficulties. Frequently, athletes travel the
world and finding the athlete can be difficult. After the independent sampling officer asks around to find the athlete in question, it is unlikely that
the testing remains a surprise. . . .
Beating drug tests
The dosages of anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) that athletes take
greatly exceed the normal therapeutic amounts and typically several different types of AAS are taken together (stacked) or used at different times
(cycled). Most athletes use AAS as training aids for recovery and discontinue use before an event so that they can later pass the competition drug
test. During a typical steroid cycle, it is common for athletes to use other
drugs such as diuretics to reduce fluid retention, thyroxine to promote
weight loss, and tamoxifen to prevent gynecomastia. In the US and other
countries, these agents are freely available in gyms and fitness clubs, regardless of their legal status.
Athletes with access to the right resources can beat the drug tests.
Other athletes can not. The whole idea behind drug testing is to have a
level playing field. Yet, in reality, this system is inherently unfair. If one
athlete has the money and appropriate support personnel around them,
they could certainly challenge a test. If another athlete has little money
and knowledge, they will be at a serious disadvantage.
About 2–3 years before working as a drug test official, I was at a party
being thrown by some collegiate athletes. People were lighting up joints
everywhere and drinking alcohol like crazy. I knew my one buddy was going to get drug tested, because he was a big guy (almost 300 pounds) and
he was always tested. Even though he wasn’t smoking anything (at least
at that party) he wasn’t worried. He said he never tested positive for marijuana even though he got stoned plenty of times the night before a drug
test. He figured that because he was so big he just got rid of any residues
really fast. While that didn’t make that much sense to me, the fact was
that he still had negative lab results. Based on the formal proceedings this
didn’t seem possible. This became clear to me years later.
A loophole in college drug tests
If you ever saw the movie “The Program,” then you were treated to the
various non-chemical means by which athletes have tried to beat the
drug tests. I have seen or heard of athletes getting caught trying to use
someone else’s urine by planting hidden vials in the bathroom, keeping
a plastic bag and a catheter down their pants, etc. I have never seen or
heard of collegiate athletes infusing someone else’s urine into their own
bladder in order to beat the drug test. I have heard of this at the professional and elite levels of competition, though. To get around all the mechanical methods that athletes used to beat AAS tests, several key checks
were done on every urine sample, as it was produced. By 1995, the procedure had evolved to the following: an athlete goes into his locker room
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and sees a notice on his locker to show up for drug testing. The notices
were supposed to be put out right before practice, so the athlete knows
not to use the bathroom. After practice the athlete shows up to the drug
test site, which was usually in or near the locker room. From that point
on the athlete has a monitor assigned to him. The athlete selects his own
container to urinate in. ID labels are placed on the cup and on other documents. The athlete and monitor go to the bathroom where the athlete
urinates in front of the monitor. The monitor must witness the flow of
urine into the specimen container. After the appropriate volume is collected and capped, the athlete and monitor return to the drug-testing site
where documentation is completed and signed by the athlete. At this
time, the pH, temperature, and specific gravity of the urine are measured
using indicator strips on the sample container. (This would serve to eliminate the use of vials of urine and prevent tampering with the actual urine
sample.) If all of the three measurements are within the appropriate
range, then the athlete can sign off and leave. If even one is off, then another sample must be collected.
It was totally possible that . . . small or thin looking
athletes could use steroids and never get caught, even
though he was drug tested.
That was the routine stuff that the athlete saw. Now let’s talk about
what really happens with the urine results. NCAA athletes are told that
they will be tested for cocaine, marijuana, AAS, and amphetamines. They
are led to believe that each sample will be tested for each and every drug.
Remember my big buddy who never tested positive for marijuana? The
reason is simple: they never tested his urine for marijuana. The rule of
thumb that I learned years later was as follows: Since drug testing costs so
much, the big guys like linemen, fullbacks, and shot putters would be
tested for steroids, while smaller guys would be tested for other drugs, like
marijuana. So to spell it out, it was totally possible that a wide receiver,
light-weight wrestler, or some other small or thin looking athletes could
use steroids and never get caught, even though he was drug tested. On
the other hand, a lineman could get stoned all the time and theoretically
not test positive for marijuana or cocaine because they always tested his
urine for steroids.
Weightlifting and drug use
If you’ve followed weightlifting for years then you know how dominant
the Bulgarian weightlifting team once was. How were they able to compete at the international level so successfully? I’ll say it for you: DRUGS.
Never mind all of the bullshit with training and restorative means. Today
they still have access to the same type of training and recovery methods,
yet they are not nearly as dominant as they once were. The reason that
the Bulgarians were able to train six times per day at very high intensities
and make consistent progress is that they had figured out how to hide
their drug use. While they used a variety of tricks, here are some of the
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methods we have been able to verify. The Bulgarian weightlifting team
would fast about 2–3 days before a competition. Fasting lowers the amplitude and pulsatility of luteinizing hormone. This, in turn, would lower
endogenous production of testosterone (T). In addition, fasting also
causes an increase in the excretion of steroids. As a result, their urine samples would show lower levels of T and other steroids because by the time
they were tested, they virtually excreted most of the evidence away. Now
this trick was not the only one the Bulgarians were known for. Their real
ace in the hole was the use of diuretics. They would use the diuretics to
urinate out lots of fluid. By ingesting an abundance of water, the diuretics would just accelerate the clearance of steroids or other banned substances from the blood. This offered two advantages: the first was that
now the athlete would avoid detection for a banned substance and the
second was that the athlete could lose weight and compete at a lighter
weight class. But the diuretics proved to be their downfall, as this is how
they got caught. At one Olympics, the whole team was forced to withdraw from competition because every member of the lighter weight
classes had tested positive for diuretics. To avoid further embarrassment,
the rest of the team was withdrawn. So next time someone tells you about
what the Bulgarians do for training, slap them in the face and wake them
up. Then remind them that Bulgaria is not the dominant power it once
was in weightlifting. The only thing that changed was that the drug testing got better.
Athletes can, and always will, maintain a few paces
ahead of drug-testing efforts.
So how about the boys from the US? Are they clean? Clean is such an
ambiguous term, so let’s be more precise: Are they taking anabolicandrogenic steroids? I have never seen or heard about first-hand any athlete on the Olympic team using AAS (we all know about the 1976 athletes
and subsequent athletes testing positive). However, I have heard of AAS,
growth hormone, and other agents, being used by lower caliber athletes.
I also know of athletes that took prohormones and tested negative. The
tests, as far as I could tell, were complete and nothing like the “insurance
policy or sink-test” type tests Dr. Voy has written about in his book
[Drugs, Sport, and Politics] (where athletes’ urine samples are dumped
down a drain and then the results are reported as negative). These athletes
did not use any type of strategies to avoid detection. There can be several
reasons for the negative results. Perhaps the athletes ingested pills that
did not contain sufficient quantities of DHEA or androstenedione (A).
Perhaps the amounts of DHEA or A in the pills were not enough to result
in a positive test. Lastly, maybe the conversion of androgens to estrogens
is so rapid that the current tests can not detect the androgens (elevated
urinary estrogen levels would not matter since these were not tested for).
Typically athletes would take 100–200 mg of A before a workout. The rationalization was that the sudden elevation of T from the conversion of
A would result in more aggressiveness and a better workout. While we
may ponder whether or not these tactics work, consider what one athlete
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did with access to more sophisticated means. He simply designed his own
“study” using himself as the sole subject. On different days he would take
increasing dosages of DHEA, A or some combination. So one day he
might take 100 mg of A, another day he might take 100 mg of DHEA and
100 mg of A, then another day he would take 200 mg of A, etc. He would
have his blood hormone levels measured and his urine analyzed. He
found that at around 800–1000 mg of A by itself, he could get enough of
an increase in T to increase his training performance. If he was ever drug
tested, the conversion of A to estrone (and T to estradiol) would also serve
to lower his A and T levels, thus offering a “negative” urine sample. This
may have worked for him, but other athletes should not be gullible and
follow the same strategy. Unless they undergo the same type of self-study,
they have no way of knowing if the androgen elevations and conversions
will be the same for them. In short, you can not rely on another athlete’s
hormonal and urinary data and adopt it as your own.
Even before many tests are implemented, athletes are
aware of the means to beat the test.
The less sophisticated athletes simply make use of the loop hole in
USA Weightlifting’s drug testing policy. An athlete has to be enrolled in
their no-notice drug-testing program for at least six months prior to the
local, regional, or national competition that would qualify the athlete for
international competition. So you could take AAS for three years, get
stronger and lift more, then enroll in the program after you come off, test
negative, post a qualifying total, and then go on to international competition (providing of course you earn that right by lifting some big
weights). This is not a slight against USA Weightlifting in any way, obviously there is no way you can know who to test before they tell you they
wish to be considered for international competition. It merely points out
that athletes can, and always will, maintain a few paces ahead of drugtesting efforts.
General methods used to avoid detection
The next series of tactics are not limited to any particular sport. They will
be presented in terms of the rationale behind their use and what was done
to prevent or curb their use. Initially when athletes were first exposed to
drug testing, they were caught off guard. Analytical chemistry was not
something most athletes specialized in. After consulting with more qualified personnel, coaches and athletes realized that simply going off AAS so
that sufficient time would pass, thus clearing the AAS from their system,
would result in a negative drug test. This was done by simply submitting
urine samples to a lab with the appropriate analytical equipment. Each
day the athlete would find out the results of the previous day’s drug test.
At some point he/she would know exactly how many days it would take
to pass a drug test. Then going into a meet, the athlete would feel calm
that they already knew the results and would test negative. This worked
well until the introduction of different methods for AAS detection.
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The uncertainty of not knowing which type of equipment would be
used or the methods that would be followed created a demand by athletes
for some other methods to avoid detection. As mentioned previously, diuretic use was one type of strategy. Diuretics have been abused in sports
with weight classes and are used to shed weight quickly. (In the old days
of powerlifting, it was common to see athletes using diuretics to make
weight and then rehydrate using an intravenous drip.) Diuretics are also
used to increase urine volume and dilution, thus making small quantities
of banned substances more difficult to detect. Although drug testing
started in 1976, it was not until 1988 that testing for diuretics began. So
now with diuretics on the banned list, other alternatives had to be found.
Physical methods such as catheterization and urine substitution continued to be practiced.
Perhaps the final war between athletes avoiding
detection and drug testers will be in the legal system.
Alternatively, renal blocking agents were sought out. The premise is
simple enough: If you can’t urinate the conjugates and other metabolites
of AAS out of your system, then you can’t get caught. Probenecid was the
most common offender in this category of agents. It retards the excretion
of a variety of drugs, including AAS. Athletes taking masking agents could
continue taking AAS closer to competition before discontinuing their use
and still pass the drug tests. Once it was realized that athletes were using
probenecid and related agents, these drugs were added to the banned substance list.
The use of testosterone is also another method for avoiding detection. At this time, the current methods do not distinguish between exogenous and endogenous testosterone. To control for this, drug testing
includes standards for the detection of testosterone abuse, with a 6:1 ratio of testosterone (T) to its free analogue, epitestosterone (E). The ratio of
T to E in the urine is normally less than two. Athletes responded to this
test by simply taking epitestosterone in order to maintain the 6:1 ratio.
So then of course, epitestosterone was added to the banned substance list.
Future trends
Research has been done on a variety of fronts to prevent and eliminate
the use of banned substances. Unfortunately, even before many tests are
implemented, athletes are aware of the means to beat the test. One such
example is that the use of longitudinal data, in order to get an accurate
hormonal profile of the athlete, has been investigated. If the urinary T:E
ratio for an athlete is consistently in a given range and then increases beyond normal limits, may be an indication of substance use. While such
testing has yet to be implemented, athletes are already using sublingual
cyclodextrin-testosterone preparations. Such preparations allow the T:E
ratio to return to normal within a few hours.
Another technique under investigation measures the ratio of the carbon isotopes C 12 and C 13 in testosterone and in two of the hormone’s
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precursors contained in a urine sample. Research in this area suggests that
the use of banned substances should be suspected when the ratios don’t
match. Endogenously produced T differs in the carbon isotope ratios from
exogenously administered T, which is normally synthesized from plant
sources. Again, athletes are a step ahead by using bovine/porcine/equine
testosterone preparations, which are believed to contain carbon isotope
ratios very similar to that of endogenous T.
It is believed that peptide hormones will be the most widely used
banned substance in the 2000 Olympic games. None of these hormones
can be detected with the existing International Olympic Committee
methods. So before the games, GH2000, an international project hoping
to develop a legally sound methodology to detect and validate use and
abuse of exogenously administered growth hormone and related substances, was developed. Presently the detection methods are still undergoing validation and have not been implemented. Athletes have already
been using GH nasal preparations, which once inhaled, have a very short
half-life in the blood.
Perhaps the final war between athletes avoiding detection and drug
testers will be in the legal system. Immunoassays for some drugs have
been automated in order to keep the cost low for screening purposes.
However, a positive result by immunoassay is by itself insufficient, so
confirmation by a more accurate method is required. Gas chromatography combined with mass spectrometry is regarded as the reference
method because the end result is a “fingerprint” for the drug or metabolite. The results are usually accepted as a high degree of evidence of the
presence of a compound. The weak link lies in the fact that the equipment is very expensive and the interpretation of the data requires a great
degree of skill. When labs subcontract out labor for drug testing, it may
be possible to get a poorly skilled individual interpreting the data. While
researches may agree that an athlete was using a banned substance,
legally an attorney could raise sufficient suspicion as to the validity of the
results, ultimately allowing the athlete to “beat” the test.
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Performance-Enhancing
Dietary Supplements
Are Dangerous
Gwen Knapp
Gwen Knapp is a sports journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Athletes are using dietary supplements purchased from health-food
stores to boost their athletic performance. Many of these products
are advertised as having the same effects on muscle development as
prescription-only performance-enhancing drugs, and studies have
shown that some supplements convert to illicit steroids once ingested. Supplement use has been linked to the deaths of several athletes, who exceeded the recommended dosages or mixed their intake
of supplements with other medications. Because the supplement industry is virtually unregulated due to a 1994 law passed by Congress,
consumers should use caution when purchasing performanceenhancing dietary supplements.
O
pen up the liquor cabinets. Turn over the car keys. And—what the
heck?—hand out cigarettes for Halloween.
No age limits on supplement sales
If an 11-year-old tennis player can walk into an alleged health-food store
and legally purchase something called Ripped Fuel, which often comes in
canisters showing a man’s torso covered with bulging ribbons of muscle,
then why not let her light up?
If a youth-baseball coach can distribute androstenedione, famed as
[Major League Baseball player] Mark McGwire’s hinky alternative to
Wheaties, without a word of dissent from the police, why not let the kids
unwind with a cold six-pack after the game?
In the unchecked market for nutritional supplements, there are virtually no limits. Athletes have been drawn to this stuff as if it were
Michael Jordan’s latest shoe model. Ultimate Orange, Ripped Fuel, XeFrom “Akin to a Legal Drug Industry,” by Gwen Knapp, San Francisco Chronicle, August 23, 2001.
Copyright © 2001 by the San Francisco Chronicle. Reprinted with permission.
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nadrine—they’re as easy to buy as toothpaste.
A few years ago, a certain chain of vitamin stores refused to stock androstenedione [andro] because of its uncertain safety record. The stuff was
banned at the Olympics, and the stores decided that was a sufficiently
negative endorsement.
Then it was reported that McGwire took andro during his recordbreaking, home-run binge in 1998, and it became the must-have ingredient of the late-’90s. The stores then started dealing.
Athletes have been drawn to [dietary supplements]
as if it were Michael Jordan’s latest shoe model.
Summer 2001’s headlines belong to ephedra, a stimulant and weightloss aid found in some popular supplements. Rashidi Wheeler, the Northwestern safety who died in August 2001 after preseason drills, had
ephedra in his system, according to a coroner’s report. Two other football
players who died during the summer of 2001—Davaughn Darling of
Florida State and Curtis Jones, a defensive lineman in an indoor football
league—reportedly had used supplements containing ephedra.
Officially, an asthma attack killed Wheeler. Several doctors have
pointed out that taking ephedra with asthma medication, or simply with
a case of asthma, made for a dangerous combination. But the medical examiner said that ephedra was not specifically the cause of death; so, its
hands are clean. Don’t be shocked now if the coroner’s report turns up in
promotional material for Wheeler’s supplement of choice.
Every month or so, my e-mail contains ads for “Legal bodybuilding
anabolics!”—“Hard to obtain pharmaceuticals.” The ad, in its entirety,
promises substances that duplicate steroidal effects legally, because the
knockoffs don’t require a prescription.
Charles Yesalis, a professor of health and human development at
Penn State, has researched performance-enhancing drugs for 23 years,
and he has become a crusader against steroids. He doesn’t have any simple solutions for the mania around supplements.
Ephedra turns up in diet pills, in decongestants sold over the counter.
Most Americans have taken it, and if they want to ramp up the dosage
and risk their health, Yesalis is uncomfortable telling them to stop.
“If somebody runs a magazine ad promising a substance that can
make me look like Mark McGwire and make you look like Faith Hill, and
we fall for it, that’s our fault,” Yesalis said. “It’s not the government’s job
to stop adults from making morons of themselves.”
Supplements skirt regulation
The problem with the supplements is that they are virtually unregulated.
In 1994, Congress passed a law that says the Food and Drug Administration has to keep its hands off dietary supplements unless a brand has already caused serious harm. In other words, we are all guinea pigs.
For sports teams, this is a dilemma. If you’re a college trainer, you can
refuse to deal with the supplements, but then you abdicate control over
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what athletes are taking and how much. Some trainers think it’s wiser to
hand out creatine [an amino acid sold as a supplement] rather than let
athletes find the stuff on their own.
In the past two years, more and more international athletes have
tested positive for nandrolone and argued that they had no idea they
were taking a banned drug. At least four studies of ostensibly legal supplements have shown that some of them contain a substance that converts to nandrolone, an illicit steroid, once it is digested.
Yet the same legislators who won’t allow marijuana use for cancer patients cover their eyes and ears on this subject. Campaign contributions
from the industry might have dulled their appetite for a fight.
Yesalis tells parents to lobby for the firing of any coach who advocates supplement use for minors. But he knows that families can’t protect
youngsters from themselves, from the urge to take pills they shouldn’t, to
take 10 when only one is recommended.
Wheeler was 22 when he died, old enough to vote, drink and smoke.
But if he had been 20, too young for alcohol, he still could have legally
downed a supplement that doesn’t carry the same nutritional statistics
found on a can of Coke.
Some supplement manufacturers do include warnings on their packages, insisting that a product is designed only for people of certain age,
and often exclusively for men. But right now, the best hope for placing
limits on this industry lies with the one group that can make money off
tragedies.
Product-liability lawyers will have to play sheriff. And if that means
attorneys have to chase an athlete’s ambulance, let’s just hope they’re
running as fast as someone on Ripped Fuel.
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Performance-Enhancing
Dietary Supplements
Are Safe
Council for Responsible Nutrition
The Council for Responsible Nutrition is a trade association representing the dietary supplement industry.
Performance-enhancing dietary supplements like creatine and
ephedra are safe when used by healthy people within the recommended dosage limits. Media assertions that supplements are unregulated as a result of the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and
Education Act are false—the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
has the authority to regulate supplements in the same way that it
regulates any other food product. The FDA should exercise its regulatory authority constructively to increase consumer confidence
in dietary supplements.
I
t is human nature to seek an “edge” to support and improve performance, and sports supplements are one tool millions of people have
found helpful. As with all efforts to improve health and increase performance, common sense needs to be applied. Performance-enhancing
products should not be promoted to children, and parents and coaches
bear a responsibility for monitoring and guiding children’s behavior in
this respect. The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) believes responsible regulation by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and by
the states is needed to support consumer confidence in dietary supplements, including sports nutrition products. FDA has the necessary authority, and needs only to exercise it constructively.
Safe performance enhancement
Creatine is probably the best-studied performance-enhancing supplement. . . . Creatine has been shown to improve performance measurably,
when a quick burst of energy is required, and it is for this reason that it is
From “Sports Supplements: Common Sense and Responsible Regulation,” by the Council for
Responsible Nutrition, www.crnusa.org, May 16, 2001. Copyright © 2001 by the Council for
Responsible Nutrition. Reprinted with permission.
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widely used by collegiate and weekend athletes. While more study can always be done, there is no evidence that creatine use is unsafe in otherwise
healthy people. It should not be used by people with kidney problems.
[The] media falsely asserts that dietary supplements,
including sports nutrition products, are “unregulated.”
Ephedra is an herbal supplement containing naturally-occurring
ephedrine alkaloids. It provides an energy boost and has been widely used
to provide the extra “oomph” that some people need to pursue a regular
exercise program. It also contributes to weight loss, and two recent studies conducted jointly by researchers at Columbia and Harvard demonstrated that ephedra can be used safely and effectively for weight loss, at
levels up to 90 milligrams (mg) of ephedra alkaloids per day. A recent
comprehensive safety evaluation supported by CRN and conducted by
Cantox, one of the leading firms in toxicological analysis. The Cantox
study concluded that ephedra is safe at levels such as those used in the
Harvard/Columbia study, using a risk assessment method developed by
the National Academy of Sciences. The study evaluated all the available
safety evidence, including FDA’s adverse event reports. CRN has submitted the Cantox study to FDA, to help the agency complete its effort to establish new regulations for ephedra-containing supplements.
The industry supports most of the existing state regulations on
ephedra product formulation and labeling. The state regulations require
an extensive warning label, cautioning against use by people with risk
factors such as hypertension or heart disease, and the industry voluntarily adopted such labeling as early as 1995. The state regulations that impose a dosage limit generally select a maximum of 100 mg per day—a
level very similar to that supported by the Harvard/Columbia studies and
the Cantox report. If FDA’s regulatory proposal had followed this model,
the regulation would be in place by now. The basis for the agency’s more
restrictive approach has been criticized not only by industry but by a
General Accounting Office report issued in 1999.* “CRN urges FDA to revise its approach to the regulation of ephedra and move forward
promptly to conclude the rulemaking based on sound and unbiased scientific analysis, including the Cantox report,” said Dr. John Hathcock,
CRN’s vice president for nutritional science and regulatory affairs.
Androstenedione is a hormone precursor and therefore may present
more potential concerns, simply because there needs to be more research
on all its effects. In the studies done so far, its conversion to hormones
and the body’s own production of those same hormones seem to be controlled by feedback mechanisms which help protect against excess. A
comprehensive safety assessment would be helpful.
Consumer Reports, like many other media, falsely asserts that dietary
supplements, including sports nutrition products, are “unregulated” and
says they are readily available in all kinds of stores because of the Dietary
* Editor’s note: In 1997, the FDA proposed limiting the amount of ephedrine alkaloids in ephedra
products and requiring safety labels that recommended a dosage limit of 24 mg per day. As of spring
2002, no regulations have been put into effect.
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Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). “In fact, FDA has
as much authority over the safety and labeling of dietary supplements as
it does over any other food product, and all foods and supplements have
been freely sold in all types of stores forever, not just since 1994,” said Dr.
Annette Dickinson, CRN’s vice president for scientific and regulatory affairs. She added, “The critics’ rants against DSHEA are so sweeping they
have become ludicrous. The truth is that dietary supplements are used by
more than half of Americans, are beneficial in a variety of ways, and have
a safety record comparable to that of any other food category.”
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16
Genetic Engineering
May One Day Replace
PerformanceEnhancing Drugs
Jere Longman
Jere Longman is a sportswriter for the New York Times.
Sports authorities are concerned that athletes may begin to employ genetic engineering techniques to enhance their athletic performance. Although gene therapy is still at an early stage of development, athletes looking for a competitive edge may not wait
for science to perfect safe applications. A single insertion of genetic material could potentially bulk up muscles for years at a
time, precluding the need to take continual cycles of performanceenhancing drugs. Testing athletes for altered genes would also be
difficult and require invasive detection methods. Gene therapy is
adding to the ethical debate over whether athletes should be allowed to alter their fundamental makeup to become more competitive.
F
or three decades, the International Olympic Committee (I.O.C.) has
been engaged in a game of chemical cat-and-mouse. Athletes use drugs
to enhance their performances, scientists devise tests to identify those
drugs, then the athletes move on to more sophisticated doping techniques.
Now, the rules of the game may be changing, leaving the Olympic
committee even further behind.
Gene therapy and athletes
Concerned that athletes would soon employ genetic engineering in attempting to run faster, to jump higher and to throw farther, the I.O.C. and
the affiliated World Anti-Doping Agency are about to convene inaugural
From “Someday Soon, Athletic Edge May Be from Altered Genes,” by Jere Longman, New York Times,
May 11, 2001. Copyright © 2001 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted with permission.
94
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meetings on the subject. “For once we want to be ahead, not behind,” Dr.
Patrick Schamasch of France, the I.O.C.’s medical director, said.
Genes serve as a script that directs the body to make proteins. It seems
fantastic today to think that injecting a gene could result in more fasttwitch muscle fibers, enabling a sprinter to run 100 meters in six seconds
instead of just under 10. Or injecting a gene that could increase oxygencarrying capacity so that a marathoner could run 26.2 miles in one and a
half hours instead of just over two. Some scientists and Olympic committee officials believe genetic engineering in sports is a decade away.
Some believe it may appear in two years. Still others believe crude forms
might already be in use, at great health risk to athletes.
“I think certain methods could have already started,” said Johann
Olav Koss, the 1994 Olympic speed skating champion from Norway who
is a member of the I.O.C. and a doctor.
Athletes, who are often eager for an edge in
competition, are not very likely to wait for science to
perfect gene therapy.
Medical applications of gene therapy—efforts to cure or prevent disease—are at a very rudimentary stage, with only one form of gene therapy having been shown conclusively to work. Little is understood about
the implications of introducing genes into a human body, so any use
aimed at improving athletic performance would now be considered dangerous and unethical.
But the human genome has been mapped out and the technology,
however immature, is evolving rapidly. Athletes, who are often eager for
an edge in competition, are not very likely to wait for science to perfect
gene therapy. Inherently, athletes are risk takers. And there is enormous
financial pressure and reward to win, to produce records and to keep up
with other athletes who are succeeding through illicit means.
Genetic engineering in sport will foster not only a greater potential
health risk for athletes than does conventional doping, but also a greater
potential for performance enhancement, said Dr. Jacques Rogge, a Belgian surgeon who is an I.O.C. delegate and vice chairman of its medical
commission. Instead of repeatedly ingesting pills or taking injections, an
athlete may be able, with a single insertion of genetic material, to sustain
bulked-up muscle mass or heightened oxygen-carrying capacity for
months or even years. Such genetic manipulation would be extremely difficult, if not virtually impossible, to detect using current methods, scientists said.
Ethical questions abound
At the coming meetings of the Olympic committee and the anti-doping
agency, officials will discuss the potential benefits and risks of genetic engineering and the potential detection methods, and they will face a number of ethical questions. Should genetic manipulation be banned entirely
in sport? Should it be allowed for athletes healing from injury or recov-
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ering from disease? If the technology can be made safe, do healthy athletes have the right to engineer themselves like race cars to push the
boundaries of achievement? Will two classes of competition be needed?
“What if you’re born with something having been done to you?”
Maurice Greene of Los Angeles, the Olympic champion at 100 meters,
said. He wondered, would manipulation of an egg or an embryo be considered cheating? “You didn’t have anything to do with it,” he said.
The Olympic committee scheduled a meeting for June 6, 2001, on genetic engineering only after the anti-doping agency announced plans for
its own gathering in September, an apparent political gesture to appear
out front on the issue, said Dr. Arne Ljunqvist of Sweden, who is an I.O.C.
delegate and chairman of the anti-doping agency’s medical, health and
research committee.
The second meeting is considered the more significant of the two; the
agency hopes to gather three dozen athletes, sports scientists, genetics
experts, ethicists and policy officials from the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.
“For the first time, a substantial group of people involved in sports
administration, sports science and genetic science will sit around the
same table and discuss a common potential problem,” Dr. Ljunqvist said.
The concerns range from the pragmatic to the philosophical. Do the
Olympic committee and other sports organizations have the willpower or
financial resources to combat the use of genetic engineering? The total
cost of conventional drug tests are already about $1,000 each.
The insertion of a gene . . . could theoretically turn
the body into [a performance-enhancing drug]
factory.
Ultimately, at the heart of the issue will be a profound question: what
is a human athlete?
“What are the endpoints of manipulation?” said Dr. Theodore Friedmann, director of the gene therapy program at the University of California at San Diego and a member of the anti-doping agency’s health and research committee. “Is the hope to incrementally sneak up on the
one-and-a-half-minute mile? Or six seconds for 100 meters? Is the question, How fully can we engineer the human body to do physically impossible things? If it is, what do you have at the end of that? Something
that looks like a human, but is so engineered, so tuned, that it’s no longer
going to do what the body is designed to do.”
Anything for an edge?
Athletes, scientists and sports administrators agree that someone will attempt genetic engineering, if they have not already. Concern over health
and safety issues has not been a strong deterrent to the epidemic use of
conventional performance-enhancing drugs.
In a 1995 survey, nearly 200 aspiring American Olympians were
asked if they would take a banned substance that would guarantee victory
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in every competition for five years and would then cause death; more
than half answered yes.
A seminar on teenage steroid use, held in New York City, revealed
these desperate efforts to boost athletic performance: A female basketball
player asked a doctor to break her arms and reset them in a way that
might make them longer; pediatricians were being pressured by parents
to give their children human growth hormone to make them taller and
perhaps more athletic; doctors were being asked by the parents of football
players to provide steroids so their sons might gain college scholarships.
Only a change in cultural attitudes will curb genetic
engineering, just as a cultural shift has led to an
intolerance for smoking.
A molecular scientist, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in an
interview that a foreign exchange student staying with the scientist’s
family was approached at a swimming pool by a stranger and was told,
“You are absolutely beautiful; I’ll give you $35,000 for one of your eggs.”
The student accepted the offer. It is not inconceivable that some parent
looking to create an elite athlete would offer far more money for such an
arrangement with, say, Marion Jones, the world’s fastest woman.
“In theory, you could do in vitro fertilization, stick in a gene for x, y
or z and you’ve built a kid,” the scientist said. “It’s been done in mice. But
I’d consider that brave new world stuff. It’s not happening with humans.”
Other techniques now being tested on lab animals seem much less futuristic. For instance, the gene that codes for the hormone erythropoietin,
or EPO, has been identified. Produced by the kidneys, EPO regulates the
production of red blood cells. A synthetic version can serve as a wonder
drug for patients suffering from anemia, AIDS or cancer. Because it enhances oxygen-carrying capacity, EPO is believed to be in widespread use
in such endurance sports as cycling and distance running.
Conventional illicit doping measures require athletes to be injected at
regular intervals with EPO to maintain the endurance benefit. The insertion of a gene, however, could theoretically turn the body into an EPO
factory. Last year a study by Dr. Steven M. Rudich, a transplant surgeon
then at the University of California at Davis, indicated that a single injection of the EPO gene into the leg muscles of monkeys produced significantly elevated red blood cell levels for 20 to 30 weeks.
“An athlete would be out of his mind to want to use this,” Dr. Rudich,
who is now at the University of Michigan, said. Ruefully, he said about
genetic engineering in sports, “I bet it exists.”
Muscular mice
Genetic material can be delivered to the body by several methods. Dr.
Rudich took a weakened virus, inserted a snippet of EPO gene, then injected it into the monkeys’ thigh muscles. Each gene consists of DNA, the
ladder-like structure that serves as a genetic carpenter, instructing the
body what to construct. In this case, the DNA signaled the muscles to pro-
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duce EPO, which stimulated the production of red blood cells.
Other hormones and proteins that can be used in gene therapy for
performance enhancement are human growth hormone and a protein
called insulin-like growth factor-1, or IGF-1. Growth hormone can be
used to treat dwarfism in children and to prevent muscle loss in the aging process. IGF-1 is critical to the repairing of muscle tissue. Both substances are believed to be used illicitly now by athletes using conventional methods to increase muscle size and strength.
Ten years ago, Dr. Helen Blau of Stanford demonstrated that a gene
could be introduced into a mouse to stimulate production of normal levels of human growth hormone in the bloodstream for as long as three
months, compared with 10 minutes if the drug were taken directly. Recently, she and others showed that oral antibiotics could be used as a
switch to turn the gene on and off.
“In theory, it is possible that an athlete could be genetically engineered to have a gene so you could increase muscle strength, train with
it and shut it off when you want to, which would make drug testing more
difficult,” said Dr. Blau, chairwoman of the department of molecular
pharmacology at Stanford Medical School. “Whether it’s happened, I
have no idea. In theory, it’s possible. It’s something to keep an eye on. It
could be a future concern for the Olympics.”
A 1998 study by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard involving IGF-1 used gene therapy in mice to halt the depletion of
muscle and strength that comes with old age. Older mice increased their
muscle strength by as much as 27 percent in the experiment, which suggested possibilities for athletes as well as for preserving muscle strength in
elderly people and increasing muscle power in those who suffer from
muscular dystrophy.
“We called them Schwarzenegger mice,” said Dr. Nadia Rosenthal, an
associate professor at Harvard Medical School and a co-author of the
study. It has since been demonstrated that mice enhanced with the IGF1 gene continue to gain size and strength when exercising on a wheel
without any apparent adverse health effects, she said.
“I’d be totally surprised if it was not going on in sports,” Dr. Rosenthal said, speaking generally of crude attempts at genetic engineering.
“Those with terminal cancer and AIDS want to know, ‘What will keep me
alive?’ Athletes want to know, ‘What will make me win?’”
Hidden dangers
The danger in attempting genetic engineering now for athletics, Dr.
Rosenthal and other researchers cautioned, is that experiments with mice
and monkeys might not work the same way in humans and might lead
to negative side effects.
If a gene for producing EPO cannot be shut off properly, the blood
will begin to thicken with excessive red blood cells and that could cause
strokes and heart attacks.
If the gene for human growth hormone is not regulated, muscles might
grow until they outstripped the blood supply or overwhelmed tendons and
ligaments. Misuse could also lead to heart and thyroid disease and cause the
size of someone’s head, jaw, hands and feet to increase dramatically.
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The entire process of genetic engineering remains imprecise. Dr.
Thomas Murray, president of the Hastings Center, a biomedical ethics research institute in Garrison, N.Y., likened it to firing at the bull’s-eye of a
target with a spray of shotgun pellets. It is not known exactly where the
virus and DNA go when injected, how they get where they are going or
what the body’s immune response will be.
An attempt to strengthen the shoulder muscles of a javelin thrower,
for instance, might lead inadvertently to an enlargement of the heart
muscle. Or worse. A teenager died in 1999 during a therapeutic study at
the University of Pennsylvania, apparently in reaction to the virus carrying genes intended to treat a metabolic disorder.
“We don’t know the technology well enough even to be sure what’s
happening in a therapeutic setting,” Dr. Friedmann of California-San
Diego said. “We certainly don’t know the technology well enough to
know how safe a gene is going to be to an athlete.”
Before athletes are fitted with designer genes, the next advance may
be to create more synthetic versions of drugs like EPO and growth hormone that mimic the effects of genetic engineering, scientists said. But
genetic manipulation of the human body for sport is sure to come. The
question is, to what extent?
Michael Johnson, the Olympic sprinting champion, said he thought
the health risks would scare off many athletes. Werner Franke, a German
molecular biologist who helped bring to light the systematic doping of
athletes by East Germany, said he was not particularly worried about genetic engineering because chemical footprints left by the inserted virus
and DNA would facilitate detection.
The most effective argument against genetic
enhancement may be that it will coerce others to
alter their fundamental makeup . . . if they want to
compete.
“I think it will be mostly science fiction,” Mr. Franke said. He accused
the I.O.C. of “purposely barking up the wrong tree” in an attempt to camouflage its lack of commitment to catching athletes who cheat by conventional methods.
Many scientists, however, disagree with Mr. Franke’s assessment of
the potential ease of detecting altered genes. With available technology,
they say, scientists would have to know exactly where the gene was inserted in order to identify it, which would most likely require muscle
biopsies.
“No athlete in his right mind is going to allow himself to be probed
here and there for evidence of a virus,” Dr. Friedmann said.
Eventually, some noninvasive detection methods might be developed, like chemical markers or a chip that could be encoded with the sequence of a specifically altered gene. But some researchers believe that
only a change in cultural attitudes will curb genetic engineering, just as a
cultural shift has led to an intolerance for smoking.
“We have to change the fundamental mind-set about doping,” Dr.
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Don Catlin, who operates the Olympic drug-testing lab at the University
of California at Los Angeles, said.
There appears to be little fear that human cloning will have a significant effect in sport. If say, Michael Johnson were cloned, the result
would almost certainly not be the same world record-setter as the original, researchers say, because environmental, nutritional and motivational
factors also play significant roles in developing athletes.
“If I’m the clone of Michael Johnson, I’ve got to bend myself into all
sorts of shapes to run, because genetically that’s what I’m destined to be,”
Dr. Friedmann said. “I run and run and run, and I can’t ever get anywhere. Then what am I? I’m a Michael Johnson who can’t run. That’s a
nobody. That must be a crushing experience to learn you’re not what
you’re genetically destined to be.”
Moral and athletic limits
Cloning aside, many athletes and sports officials say they would abhor genetic engineering in sport. “It is supposed to be a test of human capability, not a chemical war or a genetic war,” Brandi Chastain of the American women’s soccer team said.
If genetic engineering is used, “then sport is dead,” said Dr. Bengt
Saltin, director of the Center for Muscular Research at Copenhagen University in Denmark.
Yet, American society tolerates other types of enhancement, from the
caffeine stimulation of coffee to breast enlargement to erectile function.
And although there has been an outcry about genetically engineered
corn, there was mass celebration when Mark McGwire broke the major
league home run record in 1998 using androstenedione, a steroid precursor that is banned by the Olympics and many professional sports.
“Nobody cared about what McGwire was using,” said Jon Drummond, a member of the victorious American 4x100-meter relay team at
the Sydney Olympics. “They just wanted to see him break the record.”
If genetic engineering can be made safe, with fewer side effects even
than conventional methods of doping, it may grow increasingly difficult
to find supportable arguments against using gene alteration to achieve excellence in sport, Dr. Friedmann said.
“Our society has already decided partly that maybe there isn’t a lot
wrong with it, and that we can build ourselves, change ourselves, as much
as we’d like, consistent with safety and medical ethics,” he said. “If a
weight lifter makes massive muscles and with a flinch of the finger can
lift a few hundred pounds, what’s wrong with that ethically? I’m not sure
you’ll get good answers to that.”
Not all athletes will have equal access to genetic engineering, but not
all of them have equal access today to the same nutrition and training facilities. Not every distance runner, for instance, can train at altitude.
Should sea-level athletes be allowed to take EPO to match the oxygencarrying benefits for those who live at altitude?
The most effective argument against genetic enhancement may be
that it will coerce others to alter their fundamental makeup, perhaps at
great risk, if they want to compete.
“The argument in favor of allowing people to do this is based on our
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American tradition of giving individuals a huge amount of autonomy
over their own bodies,” said Dr. Eric Juengst, an ethicist at Case Western
Reserve University in Cleveland. “The limits on that kind of freedom are
interpersonal. Once your actions cross the line of affecting just yourself
and begin to affect other people, we have license to step in.”
That right to set moral limits, however, will inevitably clash with a
desire to break athletic limits. Anyone who could run 100 meters in six
seconds “has no place in sports,” said Mr. Greene, the world recordholder at 9.79 seconds. But, he added, “If anyone can run the 100 in six
seconds, I’d like to see it.”
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Organizations to Contact
The editors have compiled the following list of organizations concerned with
the issues debated in this book. The descriptions are derived from materials
provided by the organizations. All have publications or information available
for interested readers. The list was compiled on the date of publication of the
present volume; the information provided here may change. Be aware that
many organizations take several weeks or longer to respond to inquiries, so allow as much time as possible.
Athletes Training & Learning to Avoid Steroids (ATLAS)
Division of Health Promotion and Sports Medicine
Oregon Health & Science University
3181 SW Sam Jackson Park Rd., CR110, Portland, OR 97201-3098
(503) 494-8051 • fax: (503) 494-1310
e-mail: [email protected] • website: www.ohsu.edu
ATLAS is a program designed by researchers at the Oregon Health Sciences
University to discourage the use of anabolic steroids and other performanceenhancing drugs by male high school athletes. The program is administered
to sports teams through peer instructors and coaches and is implemented
through schools, recreational centers, and community organizations. ATLAS
has been tested on over 3,200 students and has shown significant results in
reducing steroid and supplement use.
Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES)
1600 James Naismith Dr., Suite 205, Gloucester, ON K1B 5N4 Canada
(613)748-5755 • fax: (613)748-5746
e-mail: [email protected] • website: www.cces.ca
The CCES strives to promote drug-free sports in Canada and in international competitions. It produces and disseminates educational materials on performanceenhancing drugs and administers drug testing in Canadian athletic programs.
International Olympic Committee (IOC)
Chateau de Vidy, CH-1007 Lausanne, Switzerland
fax: 011-41-21-621-6216
website: www.olympic.org
The IOC administers the Olympic Games. Its anti-doping code, updated in
January 2000, prohibits the use of performance-enhancing drugs and maintains a list of banned substances. Its website includes information on banned
substances, the World Anti-Doping Agency established in November 1999,
and other related matters.
National Center for Drug Free Sport
810 Baltimore, Suite 200, Kansas City, MO 64105
(816) 474-8655 • fax: (816) 502-9287
e-mail: [email protected]
website: www.ncaa.org
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The National Center for Drug Free Sport administers drug tests required by
the National Collegiate Athletic Association. It can provide updated information on banned substances and drug testing procedures.
National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information
PO Box 2345, Rockville, MD 20847-2345
(800) 729-6686 • fax: (301) 468-6433
e-mail: [email protected] • www.health.org
The clearinghouse distributes publications of the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and other federal
agencies. Publications include Tips for Teens About Steroids and Anabolic
Steroids: A Threat to Body and Mind.
National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)
6201 College Blvd., Overland Park, KS 66211-2422
(913) 339-1906
website: www.ncaa.org
The NCAA is the administrative body overseeing intercollegiate athletic programs. It provides drug education and drug testing programs. Information on
its bylaws can be found on its website. The NCAA’s publications include the
Guide for the College Bound Student-Athlete.
National Strength and Conditioning Association
1955 N. Union, Colorado Springs, CO 80909
(719) 632-6722 • fax: (719) 632-6367
e-mail: [email protected] • website: www.nsca-lift.org
The association seeks to facilitate an exchange of ideas related to strength development among its professional members. The association offers career certifications, educational texts and videos, as well as the bimonthly journal
Strength and Conditioning, the quarterly Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, and the bimonthly newsletter NSCA Bulletin. Its website includes an index of articles on ergogenic aids, including anabolic steroids.
OATH
1235 Bay St., Fourth Floor, Toronto, ON M5R 3K4 Canada
(877) 843-6284 • fax: (416) 534-7690
e-mail: [email protected] • website: www.theoath.org
OATH is an independent international athlete-led organization that seeks to
preserve the ideals of the Olympics, and to provide past and present Olympic
athletes a united voice on doping and other issues. It has issued reports on
Olympic reforms on anti-doping strategies.
Office of National Drug Control Policy
Executive Office of the President
Drugs and Crime Clearinghouse
PO Box 6000, Rockville, MD 20849-6000
e-mail: [email protected] • website: www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov
The Office of National Drug Control Policy is responsible for formulating the
government’s national drug strategy and the president’s antidrug policy. It
has worked to improve procedures for preventing drug use in sports. Drug
policy studies are available upon request or at its website.
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UK Sports Council
40 Bernard St., London, WC1N 1BR United Kingdom
011 020 7841 9500
e-mail: [email protected] • website: www.uksport.gov.uk
The UK Sports Council works to promote and support British athletes in
world competitions and to promote anti-doping strategies and ethical standards in sports. Its publications include Competitors and Officials Guide to
Drugs and Sport. More information is available on its website.
United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA)
1265 Lake Plaza Dr., Colorado Springs, CO 80906
(866) 601-2632 • fax: (719) 785-2001
e-mail: [email protected] • website: www.usantidoping.org
The USADA manages the drug testing of U.S. Olympic, Pan Am Games, and
Paralympic athletes and enforces sanctions against athletes who violate drug
laws. The agency promotes educational programs to inform athletes of the
rules governing the use of performance-enhancing drugs, the ethics of doping, and its harmful effects.
United States Olympic Committee (USOC)
One Olympic Plaza, Colorado Springs, CO 80909-5746
fax: (719) 578-4654
website: www.usoc.org
The USOC is a nonprofit private organization charged with coordinating all
Olympic-related activity in the United States. It works with the International
Olympic Committee and other organizations to discourage the use of drugs
in sports. Information on its programs is available on its website.
World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)
Av. du Tribunal-Federal 34, 1005 Lausanne, Switzerland
(41-21) 351 02 25 • fax: (41-21) 329 15 05
e-mail: [email protected] • website: www.wada-ama.org
The WADA was created in 1999 as an independent international anti-doping
agency. The agency works with international sports federations, national and
international Olympic committees, governments, and athletes to coordinate
a comprehensive drug testing program. WADA has begun conducting unannounced, out-of-competition tests that it believes will reduce the prevalence
of drugs in the Olympics and other international competitions.
Websites
Healthy Competition Campaign
www.healthycompetition.org
The website is part of a public education program launched by the Blue Cross
and Blue Shield Association, a federation of health insurers, and provides information on performance-enhancing drugs for teens, parents, and coaches.
International Drugs in Sport Summit
www.dcita.gov.au/drugsinsport
This website includes information and papers presented at a November 1999
summit of government officials hosted by the Australian Minister for Sport
and Tourism.
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SteroidAbuse.org
www.steroidabuse.org
A service of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), this website provides information and articles on the health risks of taking anabolic steroids.
Steroidlaw.com
www.steroidlaw.com
Steroidlaw.com provides health and legal information to those curious about
using steroids. Its director, criminal attorney and former bodybuilder Rick
Collins, advocates the reform of current steroid laws and contends that the
health risks of steroids have been exaggerated.
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Lancet, July 4, 1998.
Kim Clark and
Robert Milliken
“Positive on Testing,” U.S. News & World Report, August
14, 2000.
Helen Elliott
“Olympic Scene; Once Again, Drugs Move the Spotlight
Off Sports,” Los Angeles Times, March 4, 2001.
Rob Fernas
“NCAA Testing for New Target; Drugs: Supplements
Such as Ephedrine Have Become Biggest Problem for
Colleges, Which Use Random Procedures,” Los Angeles
Times, August 16, 2001.
Mike Freeman
“N.F.L. Is Seeing Fewer Flaws in Testing Players for
Drugs,” New York Times, October 7, 2001.
Karen Goldberg Goff
“Despite Sensitive Testing, Athletes Still Dope to Win,”
Insight on the News, March 15, 1999.
Steve Hummer
“Stain of Drugs Persists Sydney 2000: Summer Olympics
Special Section,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September
25, 2000.
Armen Keteyian
“Mass Deception,” Sport, August 1998.
Steve Kettmann
“Berlin Dispatch: Girlz II Men,” New Republic, July 3,
2000.
Kathiann M. Kowalski “Steer Clear of Steroid Abuse,” Current Health, March
1999.
Robert Lipsyte
“Bodybuilding Insider’s Straight Talk on Drugs,” New
York Times, May 13, 2001.
Frank Litsky
“Criticism Is Leveled at U.S. Drug Testing,” New York
Times, February 5, 2002.
Jere Longman
“Drug Testing in U.S. Comes Under Fire from Olympic
Officials,” New York Times, September 27, 2000.
Jere Longman
“The Guilty and the Not-So-Innocent,” New York Times,
July 29, 2001.
Maclean’s
“The Tour De Shame: The Sports World Reels from New
Drug Scandals,” August 10, 1998.
Stephanie Mencimer
“Scorin’ with Orrin,” Washington Monthly, September
2001.
William Nack
“The Muscle Murders,” Sports Illustrated, May 18, 1998.
C.W. Nevius
“Not Your Uncle’s Protein Shakes,” San Francisco
Chronicle, July 7, 2001.
Mike Penner
“Olympics: Critics at Drug Summit Also Call for Proposed Anti-Doping Agency to Operate Independently of
Committee,” Los Angeles Times, February 3, 1999.
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Andrew Phillips
“The Olympic Drug Cloud: Were These the Shame
Games—or the Start of a Real Crackdown on Doping?”
Maclean’s, October 9, 2000.
Rick Reilly
“The ’Roid to Ruin,” Sports Illustrated, August 21, 2000.
Ray Sahelian
“Androstenedione: Home Run or Hype?” Better Nutrition,
October 1999.
Richard Sandomir
“I.O.C. Finds Banned Substances in Many Food Supplements,” New York Times, October 12, 2001.
Joannie M. Schrof
“McGwire Hits the Pills: Brawn-Building Supplements
Also Deliver Serious Risks,” U.S. News & World Report,
September 7, 1998.
Seattle Times
“Get Tough on Olympic Drug Tests for NBA, NHL,”
March 8, 2001.
Amy Shipley
“Anti-Doping Fight May Be Long Battle; International
Agency, New Tests Are Coming,” Washington Post, September 23, 1999.
Gary Smith
“Gotta Catch ’Em All: Armed with New Methods for Detecting EPO, Graham Trout and His Colleagues at Australia’s Sports Drug Testing Lab Have Olympic Cheaters
in Their Crosshairs,” Sports Illustrated, September 18,
2000.
Mark B. Stephens
“Ergogenic Aids: Powders, Pills, and Potions to Enhance
Performance,” American Family Physician, March 1, 2001.
E.M. Swift
“Drug Pedaling,” Sports Illustrated, July 5, 1999.
Time
“Are Drugs Winning the Games?” September 11, 2000.
Internet Articles
Matt McGrath and
Gaetan Portal
“New Drugs Give Cheats the Edge,” BBC News, January
30, 2000. http://news.bbc.co.uk
Stephen A. Shoop
and Mike Falcon
“Steroids: Teens Feeling Pressure to Bulk Up,” USA Today,
December 27, 1999. www.usatoday.com
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Index
Adolescent Training and Learning to
Avoid Steroids (ATLAS), 44
adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH),
16
testing for, 18
aggression
as side effect of steroids, 43–44, 72–74
Alzado, Lyle, 36
amphetamines, 17, 30
anabolic-androgenic steroids
abuse of, by teens is a growing
problem, 41–44
classes of, 43
examples of, 13
psychological dependence and, 74
research on, is unreliable, 66–67
side effects of, 13–14, 42
in teens, 68
in women, 67
see also health risks, of steroids
androgens
excess, adverse effects of, 68–70
see also anabolic-androgenic steroids
androstenedione, 88, 89, 92
Armstrong, Lance, 52
artificial oxygen carriers, 16
Ashford, Evelyn, 52
athletes
are tarnished by performanceenhancing drugs, 28–34
nonsteroid using, should be banned,
60–61
surveys of, on attitudes toward doping,
36–37, 96–97
will never stop using performanceenhancing drugs, 20–23
Aubier, Nicolas, 10
Bahrke, M.S., 73
Bailey, Donovan, 27
Bannister, Roger, 58, 59
Barnard, Matt, 20
Baxter, Alain, 8
beta-2 adrenergic agonists
types and side effects of, 14
Blau, Helen, 98
blood doping, 16
blood testing, 81
Bobet, Louison, 62
Brochard, Laurent, 31
Brown-Séquard, Edouard, 30
Buffet, Marie-George, 32
Catlin, Don, 56, 100
Chastain, Brandi, 100
Coe, Seb, 24, 26
Collins, Rick, 65
Consumer Reports (magazine), 92
corticosteroids, 16, 53
cortisone, 16
Coubertin, Pierre de, 29
Council for Responsible Nutrition, 91
Cowart, Virginia, 66, 72, 73
creatine, 91–92
crime
link with steroid use, 73–74
Darling, Devaughn, 89
Death in the Locker Room: Steroids &
Sports (Goldman), 66
Declaration on Principles of Health Care
for Sport Medicine (World Medical
Association), 47
Delignieres, Bruno, 47
Dianobol, 8
Dickenson, Annette, 93
Dietary Supplement Health and
Education Act of 1994, 92–93
dietary supplements
lack of regulation of, 89–90
performance-enhancing
are dangerous, 88–90
are safe, 91–93
DiPasquale, M.G., 75
diuretics
avoiding drug detection with, 86
doping
as challenge to public
health/medicine, 33
definition of, 28
history of, 29–30
solutions to problem of, 26–27
Downey, Eamon, 24
Drugs, Sport, and Politics (Voy), 8, 84
Drummond, Jon, 100
Duchaine, Dan, 68
East Germany
sport doping in, 41–42, 50–53, 54, 58
Economist (magazine), 35
Engquist, Ludmila, 76
ephedra, 92
109
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epitestosterone, 17–18
erythropoietin (EPO), 15, 30
difficulty in testing for, 56–58
genetic engineering and, 98
testing for, 19
ethics
of genetic engineering, 95–96
medical, performance-enhancing drugs
compromise, 45–49
European Commission, 28
Exum, Wade, 42
Faber, Francois, 62
Faust’s Gold (Ungerleider), 50
Festina affair, 30–32, 46, 63
Fife, Graeme, 62
Food and Drug Administration, 89
Francis, Charlie, 52, 54
Franke, Werner, 99
Freudenrich, Craig, 11
Friedmann, Theodore, 96, 99, 100
gas chromatography, 18, 87
Gendin, Sidney, 60
genetic engineering
dangers of, 98–100
may replace performance-enhancing
drugs, 94–101
moral and athletic limits of, 100–101
Geneva Declaration (World Medical
Association), 48
Gimeno, Andrea, 30
Gimondi, Felice, 31
Gladwell, Malcolm, 50
Goldberg, Karen, 10
Goldman, Bob, 36, 37, 66
Greene, Maurice, 96, 101
El Guerrouj, Hicham, 58, 59
Hathcock, John, 92
health risks
of beta-2 adrenergic agonists, 14
of steroids, 13–14
aggressive/psychiatric symptoms,
72–74
have been exaggerated, 65–75
on heart, 71–72
on liver, 70–71
on prostate, 72
heart
anabolic steroid effects on, 71–72
heroin, 29–30
Hicks, Thomas, 30
Hoberman, John, 9
Höppner, Manfred, 54
human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG),
14
human genome, 95
human growth hormone (hGH), 15, 30
difficulty in testing for, 55
genetic engineering and, 98
testing for, 18
Hunter, C.J., 8
immuno-assays, 18–19
insulin, 15
insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), 15
genetic engineering and, 98
International Olympic Committee
(IOC), 94
antidoping conference of, 32
substances banned by, 7
Jensen, Knut Enemark, 30
Johnson, Ben, 9, 26, 27, 30, 35, 52, 54
Johnson, Michael, 99
Jones, Marion, 97
Joyner, Florence Griffith, 26, 55
Juengst, Eric, 101
Junren, Ma, 38
Kerr, Robert, 53
Kettridge, Richard, 22
Kimmage, Paul, 10
Knacke-Sommer, Christiane, 9, 50, 51
Knapp, Gwen, 88
Koch, Marita, 52
Koss, Johann Olav, 95
Lapize, Octave, 62, 63
Laquer, Ernest, 30
Lewis, Carl, 26, 35
libido
steroid effects on, 68–69
Lindon, Arthur, 30
Liotard, Philippe, 45
liver
anabolic steroid effects on, 70–71
Ljunqvist, Arne, 96
Longman, Jere, 94
luteinizing hormone (LH), 14–15
testing for, 18
Madden, Terry, 77, 78
Masback, Craig, 26
mass- and strength-building drugs,
13–15
Massi, Rodolfo, 31
mass spectrometry, 18, 87
McCaffrey, Barry, 78
McGwire, Mark, 20–21, 23, 88, 100
McNutt, R.A., 71
media
influence on sports, 33
Medibolics (magazine), 70
medical ethics
performance-enhancing drugs
compromise, 45–49
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Melandrini, Giovanna, 32
Merckx, Eddy, 62
Merode, Alexandre de, 37
Mitchell, Dennis, 25
morphine, 30
Mortal Engines: The Science of Performance
and Dehumanization of Sport
(Hoberman), 9
Morton, Oliver, 62
Murray, Thomas H., 46, 99
narcotics, 16
National Institute on Drug Abuse, 42
Noden, Merrell, 24
Nuremberg Rules, 45
Oakes, Judy, 37
Oldfield, Brian, 53
Olympic Games
Atlanta (1996), 27, 36, 55
drug testing at, 23
drug abuse is rampant in, 77
history of doping in, 29–30
need for zero-tolerance policy by,
76–78
Seoul (1988), 26, 35, 52
Sydney (2000), 57
Otto, Kristin, 58
Ovett, Steve, 24
oxygen-increasing drugs, 15–16
pain-masking drugs, 16
Pantani, Marco, 31
performance-enhancing drugs
athletes are tarnished by, 28–34
athletes will never stop using, 20–23
con, 24–27
ban on, should continue, 35–40,
76–78
con, 50–59, 60–61
classes of, 12
compromise medical ethics, 45–49
drugs masking, 17–18
genetic engineering may replace,
94–101
parallel Olympics for athletes using,
62–64
reasons athletes use, 12–13
solutions to problem of, 26–27
random testing, 78
sports associated with, 36
weightlifting, 83–85
testing methods for, 18–19
Picotte, Michael, 78
Pierce, Nicholas, 21, 22
plasma expanders, 18
Powell, John, 26
Price, Robert, 75
prostate
111
anabolic steroid effects on, 72
protein hormones
to increase oxygen in tissues, 15
for masking pain, 16
Raducan, Andrea, 8, 78
relaxants, 17
Reynolds, Butch, 25, 38, 54–55
Rosenthal, Nadia, 98
Rossel, Bruno, 31
Rough Ride: Behind the Wheel with a Pro
Cyclist (Kimmage), 10
Rudich, Steven M., 97
Ryckaert, Eric, 31
Saltin, Bengt, 100
Samaranch, Juan Antonio, 23
Schamasch, Patrick, 95
secretion inhibitors, 18
Simpson, Tommy, 21, 30
Smith, Michelle, 25, 40
somatomedin-C. See insulin-like growth
factor
Speed Trap (Francis), 52, 54
sponsors
attitudes of, toward doing drugs,
39–40
encourage drug taking, 23
Sport, Health, and Drugs (Waddington), 8
Sports Illustrated (magazine), 36
Starr, Mark, 76
steroids
athletes who don’t use, should be
banned, 60–61
costs of, 61
dangers of, are minimal, 60–61
vs. honest effort, 59
side effects of, 42
see also anabolic-androgenic steroids
Steroids Game, The (Yesalis and Cowart),
66
stimulants, 16, 17
Strock, Greg, 9
surveys
of athletes, on attitudes toward
doping, 36–37, 96–97
on teen use of steroids, 42–43
swimming
prevalence of doping in, 36
Taylor, Angella, 52, 53
teenagers
steroid abuse by
adverse effects of, 68
is a growing problem, 41–44
Tellez, Tom, 26
Terrados, Nicholas, 31
testing
avoiding detection by, 56, 82, 85–86
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is ineffective, 79–87
methods for, 18–19
overview of, 80–81
problems with, 54–55
random, as key to prevention, 78
testosterone, 13, 30, 47
difficulty in testing for, 55–56, 84–85,
86
excess, adverse effects of, 69–70
see also anabolic-androgenic steroids
Tour de France, 7, 10, 21, 25, 62
Festina affair and, 30–32, 46, 63
Tour de France (Fife), 62
track and field
prevalence of doping in, 36
Ungerleider, Steven, 41, 50, 52
urine samples
contamination of, 54
obtaining, 81–82
U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), 11
Verroken, Michelle, 23, 37
Virenque, Richard, 31
Voet, Willy, 7, 31, 63
Voy, Robert, 8, 84
Waddington, Ivan, 8
websites
on steroid abuse, 44
weight control drugs, 17
weightlifting
drug use and, 83–85
Wheeler, Rashidi, 89, 90
Whetton, John, 21
women
use of anabolic steroids by, 67
World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), 7,
94
establishment of, 32
World Health Organization, 48
World Medical Association, 46–47, 48
Wright, J.E., 73
Yesalis, Charles, 53, 66, 72, 73, 89, 90
Ziegler, John B., 8
Zulle, Alex, 31